,Hey there,

If you're an emotional over eater there's a hidden force that can derail your attempts to change. It's the same force that kept people in the 50's thin and most people today overweight and control around food.

It comes up every day when I am coaching clients. It's the force they learn to identify and get past in coaching.

It's hidden in plain sight. I call it 'The Way Things Are' and until we recognise it as destructive and unhealthy, we will struggle with making lasting changes to the way we eat.

'The Way Things Are' includes all of our cultural norms that keep us constantly eating throughout the day and feeling deprived when we try to change.

As a marketing insider I can tell you today's 'Way Things Are' is the creation of over-marketed food culture. We can see how our cultural ideas about food have changed massively in our lifetimes. 

Before the advent of marketing, food was far less compelling. If I think back to my childhood in the 1970's in New Zealand ... 

• Breakfast was a small selection of cereal options alongside toast or porridge that weren't fancy. You might have a cooked breakfast on weekends.
• School lunches were sandwiches made with jam, peanut butter or Marmite
• Dinner was typically what we called 'meat and three veg', I remember my friends being impressed when my mother made spaghetti - pasta wasn't a thing then. 

By contrast, today's food culture is unrecognisable -  it's a totally new Way Things Are. Just think about the vast array of options for food throughout the day  for every meal or snack occasion. For some of us, our takeaway coffee has as twice as many calories as a 1970's breakfast and far more sugar.

The biggest trick of The Way Things Are is that we think that it's natural and normal because it's a complex system of habits, tastes and cultural and emotional behaviours that have developed over time. And it's making us overweight and emotionally dependent on food.

One of the most destructive aspects of marketing culture on food is portion sizes and consumption occasions. Having worked in food and beverage marketing as an industry insider and the sole objective of that work is to sell you more. More food and drink more times a day. That's it. Most portion sizes for burgers, muffins, fries and pizza have more than doubled in the past twenty years! Here's a Business Insider video on some of the massive changes in just the past 20 years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMR1QmWavDg

In the industry, we talk about metrics like increasing total 'share of throat or gut' as well as increasing the total number of moments of consumption throughout the day. Here are a few examples ...

• 'Ice cream and an Oreo cookie' was a marketing strategy to get cookies into the dessert occasion and increase total moments of consumption for Oreo.
• Gum sales doubled when they showed two pieces per serve in advertising, increasing the volume of gum consumed per chewing "occasion".

That is how our The Way Things Are is constructed, by companies whose job it is to sell you more. So, what's the answer? 
The first thing is to be willing to not be normal if you want to end the struggle with food and weight forever.

• Create awareness around the quantities of food you are eating and your actual hunger signals. Start to notice when you're feeling uncomfortably full and try stopping before you get there. Remember portion sizes are being decided by marketers, not dietitians. It's in their interest to sell you more. And without awareness we consistently overeat. 
• It sounds counter-intuitive but it's important to actually allow yourself to eat enough. Enough real foods and real meals, that is. One of the biggest problems emotional over eaters have is habitually skimping on or skipping meals to splurge on snacks. Meals are a tried and true way of weight and appetite management that has been proven to work before marketing culture took over. 
• Notice when your eating is purely emotionally driven. Coaching can help you see how your thoughts drive your feelings and in turn your overeating behaviour. This 'think, feel, act' cycle is being driven by the cultural marketing-driven programming that is keeping you overeating. 

If you are finally ready to stop the food obsession and walk away from food that doesn’t serve you and finally, have your mental space back… then we can make that happen with a step by step plan, today!

Book a call and let’s talk. 

We’ll get on the phone for about 45 minutes and we’ll a deep dive into your relationship with food. We’ll get clear on:

• What you’re struggling with most when it comes to food
• What’s working (and not working) with your eating
• And the next steps you should be taking to permanently end binge/overeating

Have a great week!

Lydia

We've all been there, even if we started the day with the best intentions... we binged.

It's all too easy to waste time beating ourselves up, which makes us feel worse and ....yep, more like bingeing. And so the cycle repeats.

That's why I made this super simple four-step plan to getting back on track (plus a sheet you can download in case you need it CLICK HERE)

4 Steps to Recover From a Binge - Fast!
First a word... drop the shame. It's not going to help. You need to focus all your energy on getting back on track. Plus, what you are doing is normal, most dieters binge at some point. You're not broken and nothing has gone wrong.
1. Look for the window of opportunity to start again. Be patient.
When you're emotionally overeating it feels like you will never gain control, but remember - it will pass. Your brain will calm down from the sugar and hormonal surges created by processed foods and there will be a window where you can get back on plan. Take it as soon as it soon as you see it and get back on track.
2. Collect information for the future
I don't generally quote Winston Churchill but he said a lot when he said 'Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.' Every time we emotionally overeat we can learn from it by taking the time to ask ourself questions.
"What was I thinking right before the emotional eating session? Be specific finding the thought that made you go off track is the key to preventing it in the future. My favourite thought to think that would justify a binge was 'this won't matter' I would use this to allow myself to eat at the end of the day. But the thing is, it really did matter to me that I couldn't control my relationship to food. Once I stopped letting myself indulge those thoughts it was easier to stop overeating.
"What will I do differently next time?" Having a specific plan in place and making a commitment is key. So if you stopped for fast food on the way home make a specific plan about what you are going to do next time to prevent that.

3. Recommit
Recommit to your plan and start over. If you find it motivating you can start counting the time you have spent sticking to your plan binge-free. You could even congratulate yourself for every hour you stay on plan for the first day. Once you have a day under your belt you'll feel calmer and more in control.

4. Take stock of the progress you've made aside from the binge
Giving yourself credit for all of the time you spent binge-free is a great place to start. Or maybe you've been really great at eating meals, or drinking water. The point is to take stock and see where you have been able to make real change.

Wanna talk? If you are finally ready to stop the food obsession and walk away from food that doesn’t serve you and finally, have your mental space back…then we can make that happen with a step by step plan, today.
Book a free emotional eating strategy session with me CLICK HERE. 

We’ll get on the phone for 45 Mins for a FREE emotional eating strategy session and we’ll a deep dive into your relationship with food. We’ll get clear on:

1. The exact thing that you’re struggling with most when it comes to food
2. What’s working (and not working) with your eating
3. And the EXACT next steps you should be taking to permanently end binge/overeating

As always, have a great week!
Lydia

​The single biggest question people bring to coaching is some version of ...

Why can't I stop emotional eating?

Which is followed by some version of ...Why do I feel so out of control around food?

Trust me, I get it. It just doesn't make any sense. We are all intelligent, resourceful people who are able to get things done in so many different areas of our lives but when it comes to food we can feel powerless.

It was the same for me. For years it seemed like the harder I tried to stop stress eating at night, the worse my emotional eating got.

The only thing that seemed to work was to not focus on it too much which meant that it didn't get worse, but I would still struggle.

Since I've become a coach I've found there are a few reasons why emotional eating can feel out of our control, especially when we try to stop. 

One of the reasons it's so hard (and there are a few) is a weird bias in your brain called IMP. 

IMP by name, imp by nature - turns out IMP it works like an imp in your brain literally backfiring any attempts you make to resist thinking about something. It stands for Ironic Monitoring Process, which sounds like meaningless technical jargon, but in fact explains why when someone says "Don't think about a pink elephant" .. wait... you've already pictured one, right? You rebel.

The reason you do this is that you have to think about what you're avoiding in order to avoid it. Makes sense, right? The problem is the more you try to suppress urges the more you wire them in. So, the more you try to suppress urges, the stronger they get.

So, how do we actually avoid doing or thinking about something without making it worse?

Very good question. The answer is simple. We allow it to be there, but without reacting to it in any way.

The tricky part is that we have to learn to allow it to be there without ...

• reacting to it by eating
• avoiding it by distracting ourselves temporarily
• or resisting it in any way, by complaining about it or replacing one distraction with another, like watching Netflix.

We have to learn to allow our urges to emotionally eat go by without a response. This is the active skill of "allowing" and it's key in deconditioning the urge to emotionally overeat.

You can use some questions to allow the urge to overeat to be present without trying to change or avoid it.
-What does the urge feel like in your body?
-Where is it located?
-When does it show up ... and when does it stop?
-How does it change with time?

You'll be surprised to find that urges to eat will pass given time and that they aren't as urgent as you might have thought. And if you allow 50- 100 urges without responding you'll find the urges lessen.

Have a great week!

Lydia 

Want to talk? If you are finally ready to stop the food obsession and walk away from food that doesn’t serve you and finally, have your mental space back…then we can make that happen with a step by step plan, today!

Book a call and let’s talk. 

We’ll get on the phone for about 45 minutes and we’ll a deep dive into your relationship with food. We’ll get clear on:

• What you're struggling with most when it comes to food
• And the EXACT next steps you should be taking to permanently end binge/overeating

Is fear of a ‘no fun’ future keeping you stuck overeating?
Whenever I try to make the smallest change to my eating long term my brain freaks out, telling me that deciding not to have a treat when I get home means I'm choosing a 'blah', 'boring' life with zero pleasure. 
It's just the tendency of our brains to treat any change that involves short term discomfort and make it mean that discomfort will last far out into the future. 

That's because our brains lie to us to keep things safe and familiar. Basically, they are hardwired to seek pleasure, avoid pain and do what we've always done. This is what psychologists call the Emotional Triad. And while it kept us alive when food was scarce, now food is plentiful it's what's keeping many of us trapped.

I see this a lot when clients think about removing processed foods like sugar and flour from their diets. They know they feel better when they stay off sugar and flour but they don't continue because of the fear they feel when they imagine years of deprivation.

“But I really love x,” they say, “I couldn’t imagine a future without it.” 

The thing is, what I've found is, tastes change surprisingly quickly when you give them the chance. Quit sugary and fatty foods and you'll soon find them too sweet and too rich. And you can still enjoy them occasionally as a treat.

Our brains are surprisingly adaptive when we ask more of them. It's like we have the most powerful computer in the world and we never program it, instead, we just let default cultural programming run. And so we get the default results of our culture - over 60% of us are overweight /obese and eating emotionally.
-Happy? Celebrate with a treat or a drink 
-Stressed? Take a break with a snack
-Need to wind down? Go see what's in the fridge.
I was a big sweet food fan, in particular, baked stuff. As the day at work rolled and the stress mounted I would be thinking of a trip to the bakery on the way home or during a break. But now it doesn’t even occur to me - I find that stuff too sweet. A bite or two, and I can almost feel my blood sugar spiking.
Advice to keep your brain from freaking out is to focus on the short term.

Literally, program your brain. Tell your brain reassuring things to keep it focused on the short term...' I’m just giving a different kind of eating a try'...' I'm doing this now, the future will take care of itself'.
Given time, it's possible to completely change your desire to overeat even if, like me, you have been an emotional over eater for decades.

Don't worry about the future and just think about what you can do now.

Have a great week!

Lydia