#144: Stopping the emotional binges, saying goodbye to past eating habits & forming consistency
Today, I'm answering a series of questions that I was asked by one of the members in the Health with Bec Tribe.
This was her message to me:
"I want to ask advice about how to stay on track?
In particular how to build self discipline?
When you where researching your gut health, how did you let go of old habits?
How did you consistently stop an emotional binge?
Do you have any tips on how to strengthen self discipline? I seem to start well and keep reverting back to old habits either due to stress, emotions, monthly cycle….."
I answer this by sharing about my own, personal journey and the 5 most effective things that have helped me!
Links:
Download my FREE eBook with 4 15 minute meals: click here
Start your weight loss, gut healing and anti-inflammatory journey now with my 3 Week Body Reset
Continue your journey and figuring out YOUR own balance in the Health with Bec Tribe
Explore my free recipes & website: Click here
Follow me on instagram: @health_with_bec
Other podcasts of mine that relate to this topic and will help you more:
#130: How to STOP giving up on your dieting attempts and release the guilt when you 'slip up'
#126: 4 Tips To Reduce Binge Eating Patterns
#116: Keep giving up? Implement this one change to stay consistent
#13: Why Motivation is NOT What You're Looking For. It's This...
Other podcasts of mine about my health journey:
#76: (Part 1) A Vulnerable Deep Dive Into My EXACT Gut Healing Journey & How You Too Can Fix Yours!
#77: (Part 2) A Vulnerable Deep Dive Into My EXACT Gut Healing Journey & How You Too Can Fix Yours!
Read This Episode:
In this episode, I'm actually going to be answering one of the questions that one of the women inside my Health with Bec Tribe has asked me, because once a fortnight I jump on Zoom and I answer the members questions, so they can ask me questions in live time if they show up or they can submit their questions a day before and this one I get asked all the time, and it's really inspired me to obviously do a whole podcast on it.
I do speak about this in various other episodes (Episode #13: Why Motivation is NOT What You're Looking For. It's This…, Episode #116: Keep giving up? Implement this one change to stay consistent, Episode #126: 4 Tips To Reduce Binge Eating Patterns, Episode #130: How to STOP giving up on your dieting attempts and release the guilt when you 'slip up', Episode #140: My top 6 tips to quit the 'all or nothing', yo-yo dieting patterns and build consistent habits that bring RESULTS! (Even when you travel)) but we all need to hear these things said in different ways over and over again and some of you may not have listened to my past podcasts, so I'm definitely excited to speak on this topic today.
The question is - Q. Hi Bec, how do you build self-discipline? When you were researching your gut health and thyroid issues, how did you let go of old habits? How did you constantly stop an emotional binge? Do you have any tips on how to strengthen self-discipline? I seem to start really well and keep reverting back to old habits, either due to stress, emotions or my monthly cycle.
I could speak about this for hours, but I'm going to be giving five of my best tips for how to let go of old habits and create new ones when it comes to your health and making dietary changes, how to build self discipline and how to stay consistent with it so that you can begin to stop the emotional binges that come on from stress or other emotions in your life.
I'm going to be sharing my top five things that can really help and that have helped me personally on my journey and now have also helped thousands of other women, with the women that I work with in my programs for the last seven and a half years since I've had my business.
Before I get into the episode, I do want to quickly just say what the Health with Bec Tribe is, if you're a new listener. The Health with Bec Tribe is my monthly membership that comes after my signature program, the 3 Week Body Reset.
The 3 Week Body Reset is my signature program that gives women a really great taste for my approach. It's a three week meal plan - there's lots of education that holds your hand through it all and what I mean by a taste for this approach is that you can try it for three weeks and see if it works for you, see if you feel any benefits at all and see if you enjoy the food, because of course, what works for one person might not work for the next, so even though it works for so many people, you might not like it. So it's just a really good thing to try and see if it works and if you like it, and need to continue, because obviously you can't learn everything in only three weeks, there is so much to learn when it comes to reaching and maintaining your healthy weight and forming a new lifestyle for yourself - that's why I had to create the Health with Bec Tribe.
That's my monthly membership that women join as step two after the 3 Week Body Reset, if they get results and they really want to quit the yo-yo dieting and find food freedom, keep losing weight and more importantly, keep the weight off and just learn how to eat to maintain their weight and have food freedom for life. There's lots more inclusions in the Tribe, including monthly meal plans, and the Q&A calls with me are just one component of the Tribe. There's also an insanely supportive Facebook group.
There's also a Facebook group in the 3 Week Body Reset, but with the Health with Bec Tribe, it's a lot more refined, because obviously women have been in there for far longer and they're far more knowledgeable. There's a lot more gold in terms of education and support in the Tribe, but it's still incredible in the 3 Week Body Reset as well. So that's a little bit about my programs and if you want to find out more about my programs, the links to those are in the show notes of this episode as well, or you can just go to www.healthwithbec.com.
Also, before I get into the episode, I just want to say a massive thank you to everyone that watched my story on channel nine news last week. It was a huge business highlight for me. Tracy Vo, who is a news reporter in Perth, she's been working in the industry for 17 years, I've been watching her on TV ever since I was a kid, she reached out to me when I was in Melbourne about five weeks ago and asked if they could share a story about Health with Bec and my business journey. So that was a very exciting email to get because I've never been on TV before and it's obviously my dream to spread the message about my approach to as many women as I can, because I know how life-changing it can be for women and being asked to be on TV was such an honour because it did really feel good to be recognised for the insane amount of effort it has taken to be able to grow my business over the last seven and a half years. It was special in that way, but it was obviously just so special because it's supporting my dream of reaching more of you.
So if you saw that, thank you so much for watching. It's on my Instagram at @health_with_bec - I have put the whole news story up there on my feed, so you can have a look at it, if you haven't watched it yet. I did upload that on my Instagram the day after it went live on Channel 9 News and the response in terms of your comments and your shares and your messages to me and your emails that the team is telling me are pouring through is so overwhelmingly beautiful. I really took the time on Saturday to spend a few hours reading each and every comment on that Instagram reel. I had tears in my eyes. I replied to all of you personally, but I just have to say it here. I'm so incredibly grateful for your support with everything that I do. To everyone that's commented, also to all of my podcast listeners, I really appreciate you. I appreciate you trusting in me.
I appreciate you supporting me. If you're sharing this with your friends, if you are listening to this or you're following my Instagram or you've invested in my programs, I appreciate you helping me be able to live my dream and help women. Thank you! I feel very blessed for such a kind, loyal, loving as all hell community. To be totally honest, this is something that I've worked on for my whole business life, getting your face out there and putting your voice out there with this podcast and my Instagram in the hopes to grow a business and help women it's got easier over the years, of course, but I've had to do a lot of mindset work on will people judge, will people think this, will people think that, will I get hate?
I've got such a big passion and I really care about what I do. I drown out a lot of the noise and I just kick on every single day. It doesn't bother me but of course, at times it pops up because I'm human and so going on TV made those feelings pop up - will people judge? Will this story be highlighting the business in the right way? Will I get troll messages? Will I get hate messages? So I prepared myself for that, but thankfully I'm really surprised I haven't got any of that kind of reaction from it and so I think that's just a testament to the beautiful community that I have built up. So, thank you once again. I'm really grateful to have a loyal community that supports me back and wants to see me win just as I'm just as much as I want to see you win.
So my five best tips to help you stop the emotional eating, say goodbye to past eating habits and hello to new ones and in particular, what I did to help me get through those times.
So in my early twenties, I had gut issues. I had undiagnosed thyroid issues and undiagnosed gut issues as well. I speak all about this in Episode #1: Who am I? My Gut Healing and Diet Journey, Episode #76: (Part 1) A Vulnerable Deep Dive Into My EXACT Gut Healing Journey & How You Too Can Fix Yours! & Episode #77: (Part 2) A Vulnerable Deep Dive Into My EXACT Gut Healing Journey & How You Too Can Fix Yours!, which really talks about my health journey in far more depth about all about my gut healing journey and how I found my answers but in short, I did have health issues that I needed to figure out and it happened to be at the same time that I was studying a Bachelor of Science Nutrition degree.
I've always been a healthy eater but there were some changes that I needed to make to my diet. Once I found the answers and got diagnosed with what I got diagnosed with - some food sensitivities, I had an imbalance in my gut microbiome and I was diagnosed with a slow thyroid as well, I started to research a lot on top of my science degree and figured out a way of eating, which is how I teach women now and the way of eating that's in all of my programs because it does help so many other women too, but I figured out a way of eating that helped me and that I had to follow to really help slowly heal my gut issues and manage my thyroid concerns.
If you've got issues with your thyroid you do have a slower metabolism and so I really just worked out the best way to manage my weight whilst feeling as full as I possibly could, whilst keeping the foodie side of me happy and whilst limiting some certain foods that were a particular food sensitivity to me and my gut. After working with hundreds of women before I even built the 3 Week Body Reset and the Health With Bec Tribe, I learnt that the foods that I was sensitive to and what works for me is also extremely common so that's why it's helped so many women, but in short, it is a sugar-free, gluten-free, lower carb, not too low carb, just lower carb compared to the standard Western diet and lower in dairy.
There's varying degrees of whether some people respond well to no dairy at all. Some people can tolerate it. Some people benefit from just reducing it a little bit, depending on what's going on with your body. For me, I can eat small amounts of dairy now. I can even have tiny amounts of gluten here and there but I still, to this day, live a 90% percent gluten-free life, 90% sugar-free life and 70 to 80% dairy free. I can have small amounts of cheese now and I'm fine and always lower carb and this lifestyle has made me feel amazing.
When I first got into it and I got told by my Integrative Doctor that I really needed to be strict with limiting sugar, gluten, most grains, which naturally you do when you follow a lower carb diet and dairy, also for me, it was eggs back at the time but I don't talk about that much for a few reasons - I know that gluten and dairy are the most common food sensitivities and so I don't want to talk about the fact that I don't eat many eggs because I don't want anyone to ever think that eggs are bad for you. At the time I had a really strong food intolerance and sensitivity to eggs. So how did I give up eggs, gluten, dairy and sugar? This is part of the question that has been asked and I need to share my best tips on how I started this new lifestyle because this is what a lot of you will be embarking on and so I hope this helps you as well.
One of the key things that I did first of all, I was hardly eating much sugar anyway, so I was already leading a very sugar-free life. I've always been a very healthy person, so it's not like that was hard for me at all. I would still have it here and there, so I'm not really going to talk about that, but being a bit more strict with the gluten, dairy and eggs was a bit of a challenge. It was still not a huge challenge for me because I'm already health conscious and I was mainly eating whole foods and you find that if you're eating mainly whole foods, like lots of meat and veg and that sort of thing, that's gluten-free anyway, so the gluten wasn't a huge change but the dairy and eggs were …
One of the things that helped me was deciding that I was still going to eat yummy food that filled me up and that I found extremely exciting, even though I couldn't eat those foods. I didn't want to conform to the story that a sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free lifestyle is bland and boring because it doesn't have to be. All I needed to do was find a few clever tweaks and alternatives to create my own quick and easy recipes and ways of doing things and I also started to just figure out certain foods in my area that were sugar-free, gluten-free and dairy-free.
I've always been a sweet tooth and one of my favorite foods back then, and when I was younger and a teenager was cupcakes. In the afternoon or just after lunch or just after dinner, I do enjoy something sweet. When I say sweet, it's always a healthier version of a sweet treat but before I went strict with this life, occasionally I would have a real cupcake or a real piece of chocolate, not a whole heap, but I would have a bit. So I thought - okay, how can I still enjoy sweet food? There's got to be something out there and I did find something. They're in Perth, called the Sugarless Bakery. They make a range of things like fudge, donuts, cupcakes etc. I remember in my first few years of starting this lifestyle, I was having those and they were healthy enough to have as a snack every day or to have with a coffee in the morning or to have as a treat on the weekend when I'd feel like a treat. So the treat-side of me felt satisfied because this cupcake tasted just as good as the real deal. Honestly that's key - you really can find things that replace your favorite foods so that you don't feel like you're missing out.
This first tip I'm going to sum up by saying - think of what you can eat, not what you can't. So I really focused on how I can still eat yummy food that's tasty? How can I find alternatives to my favorite foods? I just didn't focus on - I can't eat bread, pasta or cupcakes because I found alternatives to everything and if you have done my 3 Week Body Reset or if you're in the Health with Bec Tribe, you would see that there are so many different ways of making foods, like pizza, puddings, cookies and pasta.
It's totally possible and it took me a few years to figure out the best alternative to certain things. For instance, I have pasta all the time, but it's the Slendier Legume Pastas and that's gluten-free, high in fibre, sugar-free, low carb, dairy-free, egg-free and I have that with pesto and a few other things and that's one of my favourite meals. It feels like I'm indulging in a really yummy pasta meal. I never feel like I'm missing out on pasta. Added benefit - it's so much more nutritious and so much more filling than just the regular white pasta. So when I'm eating it, I feel really good about myself because it's healthy. I'm not going to get bloated from this. I'm filling my body with nutrients and it's tasty. Why would I want to eat plain white pasta? Of course, occasionally if I'm in Italy, I'll just get regular, gluten-free white pasta but oover the years, because I found so many different alternatives to my favorite foods and I know how much better they make me feel and I know how nutritious they are, I got to the point when I was just finding these alternatives that I though - what's the point in eating the unhealthier alternative when I have got a whole library full in my head of ideas and recipes and things to grab?
So over time it just became a no-brainer to eat the alternatives that I've found. Now the pasta recipe that I just spoke about - I've got a really awesome freebie. It's called my 4x 15 minute dinners. It's a free eBook with four dinners that take 15 minutes to make and this pasta meal takes 5 (not 15 minutes) and it's incredible. If you want to try the pasta recipe that I have all the time, definitely download that.
That's what I teach them. So many women get success from my meal plans and my program because they don't feel like they're missing out. So if you have got my programs really focus on that food and remember, this is actually really tasty. I feel like for a lot of us, it's just a mindset thing. When we're told that we have to limit certain foods, or even if you're telling yourself you're going on a “diet”, it can make you feel like what you're doing is boring and restrictive and hard because maybe you have tried things in the past that have been boring, restrictive and hard, but meals, especially the ones that I create, they're tasty, they're big, they're so yummy, so focus on that. Focus on all the yummy things that you're eating and how nutritious they are and how good they're making you feel and don't think about what you can't eat because when you really focus on what you can't eat, it makes you want it more.
Just like a lot of things in life, we want what we can't have. So focus on what you can eat, not what you can't and I really can't stress enough how there are absolutely ways, no matter what food sensitivity you have, no matter what you've been told to limit, there are definitely ways to still enjoy yummy food. Sometimes you just need to do your research a bit or if you come straight to me, it's all done for you, but don't just stay stuck. Find alternatives to your favorite foods because there is so much out there in the world these days.
So I feel like that's just a story that people tell themselves when they get told to cut certain food groups out to help their issues. They think it's just going to be boring and restrictive and that's why they don't start and they don't follow through.
Okay, tip number two is to - always think of the feeling after. In order for me to stay consistent with this lifestyle week after week, I used to definitely be one of those people that would restrict my calories too much through the week, Monday to Friday and I'd feel hungry all the time and then I would overeat far too much on Sundays and before I figured out my food sensitivities on those Sundays, it would definitely be definitely more high gluten, high sugar things and I would wake up on Monday and I would just feel so crap.
I would feel a few kilos heavier, which isn't fat! As a reminder, that would just be inflammatory water weight. I was bloated, tired, fatigued. I had brain fog and what made me stop doing that less and less because these things don't get fixed in one night, it does take time, but over time, it might've been about six months or a year, I started doing it less and less. There's so many other things that have helped but one of the things which I'm sharing now is I would think of the feeling after, meaning when it would get to a Sunday, I would really reflect on how crap I have felt on so many Mondays in the past.
So if I would choose a food, like a meal that had gluten or heaps of sugar, and I ate way too much of it, I just didn't see the point anymore in feeling like that on a Monday. This would have been like at the end of my uni degree, maybe first year of wanting to start a business and I just thought to myself - no, I want really good brain clarity on a Monday morning and I'm sick of feeling gross on a Monday and what's the point now that I'm starting to figure out alternatives to my favourite foods.
I can still enjoy indulgent food on Sundays, but it can just be gluten-free and sugar-free and lower in dairy. I still always eat a little bit more on the weekends. I don't binge anymore, but I eat a little bit more and then I control myself a tiny bit more through the week. I'm very 80/ 20 in that way, I structure my meal plans for women but that's something that really helped me. I really started to reflect and pause before I would binge. I would choose the wrong foods to eat on a Sunday and sometimes it would trickle through, it would be the Friday night until the Sunday night. Then I'd think - okay, I'm going to go hard on Monday again.
I was just really sick of that pattern of having to restrict myself so much to feel “good” again by Friday and just wake up feeling like absolute crap on Monday. So I would just forward think - do I want to feel bad on Monday? No, there's no point and you can apply this tool too …
Every time you sit down for a meal or every time you're about to grab a food that you know that you should be avoiding for now, just take a deep breath, reflect and think about how you're going to feel after. That can help. Like I said before, this takes time. You will slip up occasionally, you will binge occasionally, but if you start practicing this, it might get less and less over time and eventually you might stop doing it altogether.
The third tip is to - ditch the scales. I say this all the time, but it can be detrimental to get on the scales, to see a number and be ruled by that number. So if you are someone that keeps following your diet, feeling progress, but then you get on the scales, it shows you a number that you don't want to see that makes you have a binge because it makes you feel crap because you don't feel like what you're doing is working - this is such a common pattern. I really recommend to most women, if you have had yo-yo dieting habits in the past and you're relating to the things that I'm saying in this episode, where you're all-or-nothing, then I wouldn't recommend getting on the scales.
I ditched the scales myself when I was in my early twenties, maybe 23 or 24. I stopped getting on them because they were making me obsessed. I would get on them on a Monday morning when I was feeling heavier and I'd be two kilos heavier and that's what made me think I had to restrict to lose weight again. In hindsight, it was probably just water weight and it only made me feel worse on that Monday.
I just don't think that scales are always the best form of measuring your weight because of what it can do to your mindset, but also because we have water weight fluctuations all the time, especially with women. If you have a day where you eat far more carbs than you're used to, the more carbs you eat, the more water you hold. If you have a day of eating that's more salty than a normal day of yours, the next day you can wake up and you can retain water. If you're dehydrated, you retain more water than if you're hydrated.
Obviously the time of your cycle as well! So hormones can affect your water weight too, so you might get on the scales and it might say that you've gained weight or that you haven't lost any even though you've been trying really hard, when in fact you have. If you really want to get on them and use them, only get on them when you actually really do know and feel like you've lost weight, if you want to do it in that way. If you do feel like you do it once a week, or however often it is impacting your mental health in that way, just get rid of them. I just go off how I look in the mirror, how my clothes fit and that's been my best form of measuring my progress.
Tip number four is to - have some sort of support group or friend to check in with who shares the same goals as you. If you're embarking on changing your eating habits, following a certain diet, making changes, this can be any area of your life but I guess I'm referring to diet here, make sure you've got at least one friend, or it can be a group of people, or it can be the Health with Bec Tribe, which is why I created it. Having a community with the Tribe, we're all on the same path, we're all experiencing the same things, we're all making changes, everyone is on the same journey and that is powerful.
When you feel alone, it can be really hard to make change because change is hard, but when you've got other people supporting you and sharing their wins and inspiring you to show you what's possible or lifting you up when you're having a bad day, that can really help to keep you on track. Now, when I think back to my own journey, there weren't actually that many friends that were going through what I was going through with my gut health.There was one friend, so I used to talk to her about it and that helped, but simply me creating this business, that was almost like my way of finding like-minded people, because all I do is work with women that are struggling to lose weight or quit the yo-yo dieting or fix their gut health.
So I've been working with women who have the same issues as me. I help them overcome them, like I've overcome them and that's been my form of community, so make sure you've got at least a friend or a group of people or a community, a Facebook group that shares the same goals as you. Honestly, it helps so much. It's so much harder to do things alone.
My fifth and final tip is about binges, especially as it relates to emotional eating. This could be a whole topic in itself. Also I have to say that I'm obviously not a clinical psychologist. I'm not registered in this area to talk about bingeing and the psychology of it. I have been in this field for seven and a half years. I've been researching this field for nearly 10 years and so this is just my advice on this and what I have seen anecdotally through so many women that I've worked with …
I really like to tell people to not so much focus on how do I stop the binge as it's about to happen, because yes, there are a few things that you can do, but by the time you get to that point, the urge to binge can be so powerful that nothing you really tell yourself is going to stop you. So what I like to recommend women do is to - reflect, get a pen and paper, or just sit there in your thoughts and really think about the times that you feel triggered to binge. This will be different for everyone but what I'm trying to say is try to figure out the bigger, outside factors that are affecting your emotions and therefore leading you to binge.
For some people, when you sit down to reflect. maybe you'll realise it's because you always seem to binge because you are stressed all the time? Maybe you use food as a coping mechanism when you're stressed? So instead of staying stressed all the time and getting to that binge time where you're about to binge, think - how do I stop myself from doing this? Like I said before, it's really hard to stop yourself. It is far smarter and far more effective to look at the trigger first, being your stressful life. Is it a job that you're in that you absolutely hate, that you feel stressed in every single day? Can you make it less stressful somehow? Can you ask your boss for a change in the structure of your work? Can you change jobs altogether? Can you ask for more breaks? Whatever it means for you. I know we are all completely different here and so I hope this doesn't trigger anyone but we are in control of our own lives and we all need to remember that. There is always changes that you can make to your life to make it less stressful.
If you're stressed as a Mum, could you get a bit more help and support from your partner or your family or a babysitter or daycare? Of course, once again, we're all in different situations here and I am not a Mum myself. I know I can't speak from experience, but 70% of women at least are mums inside the Tribe and so I've learnt a thing or two from that. Mums do feel like they want to do it all so give yourself permission to ask for a bit more help, so that you can have a little bit more time to yourself and practice just stress reducing activities, doing more exercise, watching a bit of TV, listening to some music, just not being go all the time.
So long story short, really think about - what is stressing you out the most in your life how can you slowly try to change that? As an example - for me, when I'm super stressed and overwhelmed, it affects my sleep. I used to turn to food and eat more food when I was younger on the weekends but now I just know if I'm way too overwhelmed and stressed, I don't sleep as well and then that can turn into insomnia.
So I've become far more obsessed now with how can I make my days less stressful? What's worked for me is becoming a lot better at letting go and hiring more and more team members to take some work off my hands so that my days aren't just filled to the brim with work. I don't like being go, go, go from 6am to 6 o'clock at night like I used to do for the first four years of my business. I try my best, obviously some days are different, but I do really try my best to have productive days that aren't too stressful with zero time for a break.
If you're bingeing, it might not be stress, it might be emotional and what is that emotion that you're reflecting on? What times are you bingeing and is it coming from a certain place that can be changed? So something that's quite common and it was a part of my life, whenever I would have the occasional binge when I reflected and looked back, I really learnt that I would more so do it in the times that I felt a bit lonelier.
So I looked at my life and I thought - okay, why are you feeling lonely? That week I only saw one friend on a week night and I didn't make any plans this weekend and now I've turned to food for a binge. So then I thought - going forward, I need to at least have one social plan over the weekend.
Why are you feeling lonely? Do you need to socialise more or are you socialising too much and you're not spending enough time alone? If you're an introvert, maybe you're out of balance in that way and that's what's throwing you off. So the point here is to really look in and work out if you are bingeing from stress in your life or certain emotions in your life, what is the trigger for you and how can you slowly start to tweak your days and your weeks to make yourself feel that emotion less and feel more happy feelings because I believe it's so closely related? The happier you feel in your life and the less stressed you feel in your life, usually the less you will want to go for a binge and turn to food because so many of us use it for comfort.
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