Freedom From Overeating (IT Live Recording)

This class is really,

Really special to me because I am someone who has struggled with overeating for a really long time.

And I'm curious,

For those of you who are other strugglers within the eating world,

I don't know how to say it better than that right now.

How long have you been struggling?

Is this something that just started happening to you during the pandemic?

Or have you been struggling with overeating for a long time?

Because I know for me,

There's been a really,

A really stark increase in my struggle with overeating during the pandemic,

But it started a long time ago.

But it really has amplified during the pandemic.

So people are saying decades,

A long time,

My whole life,

A long time,

But it's gotten worse lately,

Lockdown mostly,

Especially when stressed and more in the pandemic.

Yeah.

Wow,

Kathy,

You're 69 now and you've been struggling since you were a teen.

May this class give you some more freedom that you can take with you for the next 20,

30 years of your life.

And yes,

AJ,

That can really,

The opposite of overeating the anorexia,

The bulimia,

They all sort of go together in this eating that is out of alignment with our body,

Mind and spirit.

It's out of balance.

And so what we're going to be talking about today is really not a weight loss or a dieting tip.

So if you think that you're here to learn how to lose weight quickly and keep it off forever,

I just want to go ahead and burst your bubble because I want to go into what's really there.

And I want to tell you a story to get started.

So I,

I don't even know why I grew up in Kentucky and I don't know why my parents thought this was a good idea.

But when I was a baby,

They started putting apple juice in my bottle and.

I got hooked on sugar,

Obviously,

Very early in life,

Only drinking apple juice.

And then when I was five years old,

I had my first taste of a Hershey's bar and I was completely hooked.

I'm curious if anyone else can relate that this is something that started for you in childhood where you were given a lot of sugar and it sort of just became who you were.

And what happened to me was that I really struggled feeling like I fit in when I was growing up.

And I had some really traumatic experiences happen in my childhood,

As well as some deep feelings of abandonment,

Rejection and neglect that happened.

And I turned to sugar and I turned to food and I turned to really any anything sweet to help me feel better.

And I'm curious if anyone else did that when you were a child,

That you needed soothing,

You needed nurturance,

You needed love and care.

But because you weren't able to receive those from your caregivers instead,

You turned to food to feel better.

Some people are saying,

Yes,

Lisa saying never.

My parents are health fanatics.

That's amazing.

I wish mine would have been my teeth would be thanking me right now.

And yes,

Nadine,

That is real.

And that's something that we can we're really going to talk about today is like,

What can we do with the things that happened to us when we were children?

Are we just victims forever?

Are we stuck like this?

Do we have to continue these patterns on?

I fully believe that the answer is no.

That just because we were conditioned when we were small to believe that food would make us feel better.

Because obviously it does.

We need calories to survive.

We've been evolutionarily wired to go for things that are sweet and fatty and salty to help us stay alive.

And we have also been conditioned to believe that they are going to really soothe us.

But what's really interesting for me is I remember that I am seeing a lot of emotional eating,

Talking about things here in the comments.

Thank you all so much.

Keep commenting.

I'm reading,

Reading them all,

But it's hard to stay focused.

Sometimes I won't read them for a minute so I can keep chatting and sharing what I'm I'm up to here.

But I am reading your comments and so appreciate them.

So keep them coming.

What I really wanted to say was that I remember the moment that I had what's called disenchantment for pretty much the first time.

And I'm curious if anyone else is familiar with that word disenchantment.

For me,

It happened when I learned about this idea from Dr.

Judd Brewer.

And Dr.

Judd Brewer is this incredible neuropsychiatrist I've been studying under for the last four years.

And I learned that eating is a habit loop.

And I was like,

What?

What do you mean it's a habit loop?

And he talks about that we all have things that trigger us.

And then when we get triggered,

We engage in behaviors,

Mostly to make ourselves feel better.

And then we have a result or a reward.

It's called reward based learning.

And I had this moment of just like waking up and recognizing while I was sitting.

I live in Maui half time.

I live in San Francisco the rest of the time.

And I was sitting at the beach one day eating this delicious cookie.

And I remember looking down at it and I suddenly realized that this cookie.

I had barely tasted any of it.

It costs like seven dollars because I'm on Maui and everything is ridiculously expensive.

And suddenly I recognized that it actually didn't make me feel better.

And that was my first real moment of disenchantment.

And Dr.

Judd talks about it a lot that we have to sort of first have the awareness of,

Oh,

This is my habit loop.

I eat cookies to try to make myself feel better.

So I want us all to just stop and pause for a second and do this together.

Think about something.

The trigger doesn't really matter.

It's not that important.

But think about something that causes you to overeat.

Maybe it's your reading the news and getting stressed about that.

Or maybe it's talking crap to yourself and judging yourself and then you want to punish yourself or self-sabotage.

Or maybe it's your work and you just get distracted and you overeat because you're not paying attention.

There's so many things.

But I want you to just all think about it and just recognize.

Can you see that there are times in your life that you are engaging with food as a way to try to make yourself feel better?

Can we all just make sure that we've got that shared self-awareness here?

What's so beautiful and you know,

I never know how many people are actually here.

Insight Timer told me that there were 633 of you signed up.

So I have no idea if there's actually 52 people here.

It seems like there's probably a lot more judging by the comments.

But however many of us,

We're all here together and we're all going through this.

And I just want to normalize that you are not alone in your experience of feeling that you need to eat something to make you feel better.

We have learned this.

We have been conditioned since childhood and we are not here to judge ourselves for feeling this way.

And we are not here to make ourselves wrong or bad.

But we are here to bring a little more awareness.

We're shining the light of mindfulness into this habit loop of,

Oh,

Whenever I feel sad,

I eat ice cream.

And that part makes sense,

Right?

Mary,

His name is Dr.

Judd Brewer.

So what I want to get at is sort of what happens next because this is what really woke me up.

I recognized that for me,

Well,

For a long time it was cookies.

But before it was cookies,

It used to be gallons or half gallons of chocolate milk.

I don't know if you all,

Because I don't know where in the world you are,

But here in America there's this chocolate milk powder stuff that came in a yellow can.

Maybe somebody can remember the name of it.

I don't remember what it is.

But I used to pour a ton of it into my chocolate milk and then I would add chocolate syrup.

And then I would stir it all up and then I would drink it.

Yes,

The Nestle,

Nesquik,

Yes!

I knew somebody would know.

Yes,

I used to put,

Just squirt the bottle of chocolate syrup,

Like hardcore squirt,

Until it was this thick at the bottom and then add the Nesquik on the top and then stir it all together and then just like through a straw.

And then I would look down and it would be gone and it wouldn't have really even tasted that good.

And when I started to practice mindfulness,

I discovered the result of that behavior.

And when I paid attention,

I was astounded because guess what I got from that behavior?

I got a terrible stomach ache because it turns out I'm lactose intolerant.

I had no idea because I just thought it was normal for everybody to have a stomach ache after they ate any sort of dairy.

Yes,

Cindy,

The app that I'm a facilitator on is called Eat Right Now,

Yes.

So what I discovered is not only did I have a stomach ache,

But I would also get headaches.

And then I would get really dizzy sometimes.

And I'm curious,

Does this resonate?

Has anyone else ever had this experience where you've had too much of a good thing and you've really felt sick to your stomach,

You felt bad afterward,

You felt nauseous,

You felt bloated,

You felt gassy,

You felt like,

Oh,

I'm sickened.

Yeah,

So here's the real question.

That's bad enough on its own,

But how many of you after you realize how bad you felt,

How many of you have judged yourself or made yourself bad and wrong?

How many of you have been like,

I am a terrible person,

I wish I would have never done that,

Why do I always do this,

I'm so stupid,

I should know better,

I'm this many years old,

And I should know I shouldn't eat this stuff.

I'm saying all these yeses.

And I just want to normalize that this is something that is part of our human experience and we all share this here.

We have these cycles of shame that are so pronounced in our culture that when we do something that we think is bad,

We then think that the way to make ourselves feel better is to beat ourselves up.

And does that actually work?

If anyone has ever seen a really positive consequence come from beating yourself up and you have a great result,

Please share it in the chat box so we can all learn from you.

But I will tell you that from my own personal experience,

What I have found is it leads into what I call my cycle of doom,

Or my spiral of doom.

Does anyone else have a sort of a spiral of doom?

You like do the thing and you regret doing the thing and then you feel bad that you did the thing and then you feel bad that you're feeling bad about doing the thing and then you just go whoosh until you just feel like,

Oh,

But maybe if I just had some more chocolate milk I'd feel better.

Has anyone ever done that before?

And then it's this loop that just keeps going and going and going.

The hedonic treadmill,

I think they call it.

Ah,

Yes.

So Cindy,

It sounds like you already know what I'm going to talk about today.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

The crash cycle of doom.

Yes.

The vicious loop.

Yes.

The pride and shame spiral.

Yes.

The efforts.

In for an ounce,

In for a pound.

Wow.

Yes.

Yeah.

Kathy says the spiral keeps going and so does the weight gain.

So what do we do?

Are we just here to commiserate with each other or do we actually want to create positive change?

Because I know that for myself,

I feel really hopeless when I discovered all of this at first.

So I discovered mindfulness and mindful eating long before I discovered Dr.

Judd.

And in that gap between finding out about mindfulness and then learning about the reward based learning and mindful habit change around food,

I found myself just simply making one little shift.

And it happened because I went and lived at a Buddhist monastery.

So I'm going to offer you one idea as something that I practice many,

Many,

Many meals.

And it made a significant difference in my ability to first of all,

Enjoy my food.

Second of all,

To really digest my food.

And third of all,

To stop overeating so much.

And it sounds simple and it sounds silly and it sounds like a duh.

But one way we can get freedom from overeating is to chew our food more.

And at the monastery,

We were asked to mindfully chew every bite 30 times.

Has anyone done that before?

You can write in the comments if you are someone who has experienced really mindfully,

Consciously focusing on how thoroughly you are chewing your food for each bite.

Or maybe there's some of you who are sort of the opposite.

Maybe you're somebody who you shovel the food in your mouth very quickly and you swallow it and then you immediately get a drink right after.

And you don't actually really chew your food and you just keep going and you keep going and then you look down in the bag of chips or whatever it is is gone.

So if that's you,

I want to say that that was me for a really long time.

And that pausing,

Slowing down and mindfully chewing and just trying like I made a game of it.

Can I count to 30?

Can I actually do this?

Or is the food all going to dissolve in my mouth before then?

And I found that just that one action made a significant impact in my weight loss.

Over time,

It wasn't like I suddenly dropped 5 pounds,

But over the course of about 2 years,

I lost 60 pounds.

And I've kept most of it off now since,

Gosh when was that?

2014.

And it was remarkable because what I discovered is that I have the ability to actually enjoy my food.

So I'm going to pause and read these comments and see what you're saying and then I'll keep going.

Ooh,

Emil says it's boring to chew your food.

That is really interesting.

Yes,

And Hannah said to put the fork down during meals.

I was going to suggest that next.

That was the other thing that we were challenged to do is what if instead of having the next bite already lined up,

What if you really are present with what's here now?

Because isn't that what we're normally doing in our lives?

Aren't we oftentimes just preparing for the future?

Aren't we really just going ahead in our heads?

We're just,

We're here eating,

But we're thinking about the message we have to send or the laundry we have to get done or the appointment we have to get to.

And we're not even chewing our food.

We're just chewing our thoughts.

But if we put the fork down or the spoon,

The knife or the chopsticks,

Whatever you're using,

And we just chew mindfully,

It can be boring,

Emil,

But it can also not be boring.

It can also be really delightful to actually taste all the flavors.

I want to tell you guys about a really embarrassing thing that I did once.

So a little bit earlier in the pandemic,

Before Delta hit and after everyone was vaccinated,

I held a dinner party.

So I have a 12 week program that I run called a Lighter You that helps people find freedom from overeating.

And I held a dinner party for people who wanted to know more about this experience.

And I led them through mindful eating in my house and I prepared dinner.

But I made a really important mistake.

I added a can of tomato sauce,

But it didn't have any flavor.

So all these people came over to have this dinner with me to practice mindful eating.

And I literally gave them just tomato sauce and spaghetti noodles and salad.

And they were like chewing and I was looking at their faces and I was like,

What's happening?

And somebody's like,

Is there any salt?

And then somebody else is like,

Do you have any garlic or onions?

Maybe that would have been good to put in here.

And I was so embarrassed.

But I also recognize that when our food is boring,

We get bored.

And when we create food that actually really tastes good,

It invites us to slow down.

It gives us an opportunity to savor even more.

And so the next time and all the times I've led that since,

I always make sure that the food is way better.

But I tell you that story because it's really interesting how we can sometimes find that the things that we thought would be enjoyable when we eat them quickly,

Sometimes are not actually enjoyable when we slow down.

And the other thing that I've discovered particularly around this is Snickers bars.

Does anyone like a Snickers bar here?

Is anyone like a thing that you do like over Snicker?

Yeah,

So I used to love Snickers bars until one day I learned mindful eating of chocolate.

And I decided I'm going to mindfully eat a Snickers bar.

OK,

Cool.

I'm glad there's some other Snickers Snickers bar fans here.

So I had this fascinating experience where as I started slowly and mindfully savoring each bite of the Snickers,

I discovered that it tasted like poison.

And I literally shed a tear because I knew that I couldn't actually keep eating Snickers bars anymore because it was really gross.

When I tasted it,

I tasted chemicals.

I tasted things that weren't natural,

Things that weren't healthy.

I tasted the intensity of the sugar and I noticed for the first time when I really slowed down that I didn't actually enjoy it.

So I'm going to just pause,

Read some more comments and then I'm going to share one thing that you can do whenever you get overwhelmed with that craving to have a Snickers or whatever it is for you.

Lisa,

What is nugget?

I don't even know how to even say that word nugget nugget.

Right.

I don't know what it is.

I don't know why I should put it in my body.

Anthony's.

Yeah.

So it might not be the same for you as Snickers bars.

And that's totally OK.

I'm not saying that like everyone is going to have that experience,

But just slowing down and getting curious.

That is the number one thing I want to offer you today is to find freedom from overeating.

You have to come from curiosity and it's curiosity about what does my food taste like.

But it's also curiosity about why am I eating?

And we're going to talk more about that in just a second.

I'm going to read some comments and I will invite you if you do have paper,

What I'm about to teach on next.

It might be helpful for you to take some notes.

So you're welcome to grab some paper or grab whatever device you want to write on.

Let's see.

Yeah.

Ellen said that.

Oh,

Wait.

More comment.

Every time someone comments,

I lose the other comments.

The struggle.

OK.

Ellen said,

I have a lifelong bad habit of eating while reading,

Watching TV or scrolling through my phone and eating mindfully when alone is my biggest challenge.

And it sounds like other people are also agreeing that that has been a challenge for them.

And I will tell you that very honestly,

It is also a challenge for me to eat mindfully when I'm alone,

Because oftentimes I want to be doing something.

But part of the experience of eating is actually getting out of ourselves as human doings and coming back to ourselves as human beings.

And so what I want to offer is we can enjoy our food more when we let ourselves be with it,

Be present to the textures,

To the flavors,

To the aromas,

To the squishiness,

All the things that are going on in there,

All the ways that we feel our taste buds light up.

And we can also from that place really be able to eat less because we will be more aware of our belly and when we're actually feeling full.

Nadine says,

I love this session.

Me too.

I'm so happy.

You guys probably don't know this because it's your first time for many of you.

But I used to teach on this on Insight Timer a lot and I was going to make a course about it,

But I never did.

And instead I made a course that's pretty similar.

So if you're liking what I'm teaching so far,

I'll just go ahead and invite you.

You might want to write down the name of my course.

It would be helpful for you perhaps.

It's called Real Relief for Everyday Stressors.

And I do talk about craving and mindful eating and how to overcome craving in the course.

And it goes into more depth than I'll probably get into today.

So you can find that on my profile.

So let's see.

More comments.

Yes,

Ellen says,

I'm going to try mindful eating next time I'm tempted by sugar.

Amazing.

Yes,

Since I reduced my sugar intake,

The chocolate bars are not so tasty anymore,

But the craving can come anyway.

Yes.

And I've been asking myself if I'm actually hungry.

Yes,

We're going to talk so much about this in just a second.

I'm so happy.

Yes.

So Ritu,

Actually I have already made one of those and I'm going to copy and paste it into the chat box.

There it is.

I just made a freedom from overeating inside timer circle.

And you are welcome to click on it.

I think maybe if you can't find it through that link.

I don't really understand how links in the app work.

You can just type it in in the circles thing at the bottom.

You can type in freedom from overeating and you can let me know if you found it because I think that I mean,

I just made it right before our live and hopefully it's there so you can let me know if you found it.

So we're going to go on in just a moment and we're going to talk about how to ride the wave of a craving.

And before we do,

I'm curious,

Are there any other questions that you have as far as mindfully eating and the two trip to trip.

I'm tongue tied.

Take.

I still can't say it.

Tips and tricks.

The two of them that I taught you,

Which was first to chew your food at least 30 times each bite while actually paying attention to the way it tastes.

And the second one was to really put your fork down between the bites and to be present with your food rather than to be thinking about already putting in the next one and shoveling the next bite in.

Tom says,

I'm here for how to not eat so much.

And yes.

So,

Tom,

The way to not eat so much is actually simpler than you think it is.

And it really starts with the question that somebody even mentioned it earlier.

The question to ask yourself is.

Am I actually hungry?

And what I mean by that is oftentimes we think we are physically hungry,

But we are actually emotionally hungry.

I remember the day.

So I trained to be a meditation teacher at UCLA.

And when I was going through my training,

We were learning about emotional eating and we were given this handout and it was it was like seven signs of emotional eating instead of physical hunger.

And I remember sobbing as I went through it because I recognized that so much of my food intake and the reasons that I was overeating was because I was trying to fill a hole in my heart.

And that I was not physically hungry,

But I thought that if I ate more and more and more.

Eventually it would fill up.

And I want to just offer.

All of us some kindness in this moment.

Because there's a chance that every single one of us here has done this to.

That you have thought that you were hungry and you've reached for whatever your food of comfort is.

And you've eaten a whole lot of it to try to soothe you from whatever was going on mentally or emotionally inside of you.

And then you recognized at the end that you actually don't feel better and that you probably feel worse.

And then the spiral comes on.

Lisa,

I actually the way to activate the parasympathetic nervous system always is by deep diaphragmatic breathing,

Which I have personally found when I lived at the Buddhist monastery to be sort of tricky while eating.

But it is doable.

So my challenge to you is to join our new circle and to post in it and let us know how it works for you and anyone else who wants to share.

And Todd says I'm helping my partner heal from a 35 year eating disorder.

Lots of layers and steps to healing.

Absolutely.

And I'm by no means telling you that I have a magical cure.

So please don't think that.

But I do have something really special and unique that I created that I want to offer you as an opportunity to ride out cravings.

Tom was saying I crave things suddenly and just think I'm hungry.

And what often happens when we have a craving is that we are hit with a strong feeling.

And we don't know what to do about that feeling.

So we think that we just need to eat.

How many of you eat your feelings?

I eat so many of my feelings.

And just because we are humans who eat our feelings does not mean that all hope is lost.

What it means instead is that we have an opportunity to become mindful and become aware that we do it.

Because for so long in our lives we have just been at the mercy of our brains that tell us,

Oh craving,

Have to have it now.

And I want to offer that through mindfulness we can take our power back.

And we can learn to live free from these cravings because we know what to do instead.

Laura says I stress eat.

Yep,

I totally hear that.

Liz asked how does someone join the circle?

And I posted the link earlier.

Here it is again.

I'm not sure if you'll be able to click on it if you can't.

It's just a circle called Freedom from Overeating.

And I just also want to say right now,

I haven't mentioned this at all.

If you need some personal help with this,

I actually do mentoring sessions here on the Insight Timer.

And so if you're thinking like,

Okay,

I want to do this,

I should take her course,

I should do the circle,

But really I need some accountability.

Or,

But what about my thing?

It's a little bit different than what you're saying.

Or just I could use a cheerleader,

Whatever it is.

I want you to know that you can work with me one on one here on the Insight Timer.

And I lowered the prices so it's a lot more affordable for all of you.

And I'm excited for the opportunity to get to support some of you.

So know that is an option.