What Is Powerful Enough To STOP You Over-Eating?

Identifying why you really want to stop comfort eating can be a powerful tool to help you take back control of a craving. What is your why? You’ve got to have an excellent, personally meaningful reason, to give up what comforts you. So, in this byte, I ask you: What’s really worth putting your comfort binge aside for? I offer suggestions and ways to answer this question.

This is the second of a quick tip series about comfort eating recovery.

Here's another podcast for you: How Do I Stop Self-Criticism?

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi, this is Shelley Treacher from Underground Confidence. It's really nice to be back. Firstly, I want to apologise to anyone who's a regular listener and who's missed the podcast. I appreciate that more than you will ever know. But as you can probably guess, I've been taking a little break from my social media and media output. It turns out that I needed to practice what I preach and take a little break for myself. Which has, I'm happy to say, been very refreshing for me. There's been a couple of changes in my life, which meant that I had to call on all of my resources. It turns out that they're pretty good. So no doubt the media that I produce in the next few weeks or months will be infused with everything that I've been surfacing, resurfacing, and gathering. You are always on my mind. I am always thinking about how I can communicate what I learn. And one of the ways I do that is to live by example. So I've been taking a well-needed break. My plan for the next few weeks is to just offer you some quick bite tips about comfort eating, but also about how to heal your self-worth, self-confidence, and difficult relationships. This will give me time to focus on myself over the summer to enjoy the good weather, and also to impart to you what I'm passionate about. So rather than having a regular Wednesday when I produce a 2025 minute podcast, I will just be giving you these bites as they come out from my mind. If you'd like a weekly reminder of everything that I produce, please stay on my newsletter. The link will be in the show notes. This will include everything that I produce, every time that I'm quoted in the media, every article and blog that I have published, and every podcast and every bite and every video. This might sound like a lot, I promise you're not going to be bombarded, but you will get the best of my wisdom from there. That's how I can show you how to get through emotional difficulty best. From the newsletter, I also get the opportunity to introduce you to how I can help you so you'll get the latest news about any programmes that I offer. This is also something I'll be spending time on in the summer. That and the community that I've talked about before. These things are all in the last finishing stages and will be shown to you as soon as I have them. But now let's get on with what you've probably been waiting for. The next quick tip. This one is to do with comfort eating, but it is quite an important question for most of us actually. These tips, by the way, are not in any particular order. I don't think it's linear learning how to recover from comfort eating or learning how to treat yourself well. If you're looking for a really good grounding in what emotional eating or comfort eating is and what you need to be looking for to try and understand it, go back to my first podcast. Particularly if you're not sure whether emotion drives your comfort eating. But for those of you who know that your comfort eating is driven by emotion, this bite is something that you're ready for. This is about identifying why you really want to stop comfort eating. What is your why? You've got to have a really good, personally meaningful reason to give up what comforts you. This has to be a really motivating reason. What people usually say when I ask this question is that they want to lose weight. They want to look better, they want to feel better about how they look, and they want to fit into the clothes that they used to fit into. But this clearly is not a compelling enough reason. I think you need something more compelling, and perhaps deeper than that. Something that will actually make you stop reaching for comfort food when some kind of emotion or human experience has disturbed you. So at the end of this recording, which will be soon, write down or type down all the reasons that you might possibly have for stopping comfort eating. The quality of life that you might have if you stopped. This might come down to your values in life and what brings you meaning, so write those down too. What do you really want in life? What do you believe in? One of my clients said that she wanted to be able to play with her granddaughter, and I have another client who just wants to be able to walk so that they can enjoy their free time and holidays more. Make it emotional and get as specific as possible. For me there are several things that bring me meaning in life that might stop me from comfort eating. One thing that's really important to me is connecting, as you may be able to tell. I value deep loving connections with myself and with other people. This is often quite difficult if I'm stuffing my face with junk food. Another thing that I value is feeling strong in my body and emotionally. As I told you some months ago, I started running. And at first I found it surprising that I could run for longer than I expected, but I still hated it. I have to say I've grown to love it. One of the things that one of my audio coaches got me to focus on recently is the word strong. When I think about that word, when I focus on it while I'm running or in everyday life, I feel connected to a real inner strength that I have. And it feels really good. So this is the kind of thing that might stop me from reaching for comfort food. It's important to me to connect physically and emotionally to all that life has to offer me. Another thing that motivates me is knowing that I know how to work through emotion. I've spent years, thousands of pounds, and a lot of time researching about this. So I really might as well use it. I do find it fascinating, so quite honestly, sometimes if I'm caught in the throes of wanting something sugary and I realise that I've got some emotion behind it, like I'm annoyed with somebody who just cut me up while I was driving, then I will think, well, the food isn't really gonna help me with that stress and anger. What will help me with that? And that is what I'll leave for another bike podcast tip. But hopefully you can see how I'm influenced by what's meaningful for me and how that helps me to treat myself better and to go for what I want. You can do that too. So, what is your meaningful reason for giving up comfort eating? I'd love to hear that from you. When my community comes out, this is the kind of question that I'll be asking you to respond to. Just saying things like this out loud to people who understand what you're talking about can be incredibly powerful. So for now, just send me an email, shelley underscore treacher at hotmail.com. And I'll make some kind of post out of this. You can be anonymous or named, it's completely up to you. So, what's really worth putting your comfort binge aside for? Keep that higher purpose in the forefront of your mind. That's it for today. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to catch that post, you can find me on Instagram, on Facebook, on TikTok, and on YouTube. All under Underground Confidence or Shelly Treacher. This is also where you'll find details of my latest group program. We start at the beginning of July on Tuesday evenings with Comfort Eating Recovery Programme for six weeks. Come and join us. There are only a couple of places left though, so please be quick. This is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher. I hope I see you again soon.