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Episode 84. Karen was spiraling. She had been doing so well. She was eating well, walking daily and feeling great. But for some reason today she felt off. She ate more than usual at lunch, maybe because she was scrolling mindlessly on her phone and saw a few upsetting posts about someone she went to high school with who is battling cancer. She kept scrolling, and before she knew it, she had eaten too much. She felt stuffed. Not super stuffed, but enough to feel uncomfortable.
She got mildly frustrated with herself after this, but doesn’t totally spiral out… yet. She told herself, (somewhat subconsciously), “it’s fine, it’s one meal, you can get back on track immediately. Relax.”
But she moves on with her day and doesn’t acknowledge the actual thoughts that were going through her mind in the moment. Partly, because she’s ashamed of them. She shouldn’t feel so self-critical and she knows it isn’t helpful. She needs to be kinder to herself, she knows this. She just tries to think of something else instead.
If she were really honest with herself, that simple act of eating more at lunch and feeling overfull triggered thoughts like:
- “I can’t believe you did that, you feel sick now, that’s what you get.”
- “You were feeling so good, and now you’re going to fall back in old habits.”
- And if we dig to the core thought, it was: “You’re going to fail again.”
She continued to feel off all day, and before she knew it she had an extra snack in the afternoon even though she definitely wasn’t hungry.
By the time dinner came, she felt tired (physically and emotionally), mad at herself, and it was all she could do to heat up leftovers and have dinner in front of the TV. And why not pull out the ice cream, she clearly blew it for the day.
All because she didn’t fully address what we really bothering her. That hidden sentence that popped up right after she ate a bit extra at lunch.
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How Our Hidden Sentences Hold Us Back
You see, our brains avoid the truth of what we are really saying to ourselves about our eating, because it’s painful. And a big part of us knows that that inner critic in us can be incredibly unhelpful.
Karen’s logical attempts to reassure herself were well intentioned. But her brain was still triggered by all the hidden critical thoughts she wasn’t acknowledging. The ones exacerbating the pain and silently keeping us stuck.
The Power of Mindset
Most of us have many unhelpful hidden sentences all the time.
And until we learn to unpack them and really examine them, and even look for the positive intention behind that part of us, they will continue to silently impact us, without our control.
Confession: I Used to Hate CBT
I have a confession to make. I used to really hate mindset work (aka cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, in grad school). Even still the term mindset kind of annoys me, because it makes me think about all the things I learned that felt so invalidating.
Like, just notice you are doing “all or nothing thinking” and shift it. It’s that simple, right?
Wrong.
I had so much unaddressed pain that felt unseen. Changing my mindset in that way felt completely impossible to me. I just wanted to yell, “It isn’t that simple!” or “I have too many negative thoughts!” It often felt like wac-a-mole to try to challenge them all.
Can’t Change It? Guess I’ll Accept It
Because of this, I was drawn to Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which I took to mean, “just accept all the discomfort and do it anyways.”
This came in handy at times. Like when I was anxious about writing my dissertation but needed to power through and do it anyways.
Just do it. Power through. Right?
For the record, I love ACT, and CBT now. They both provided me with valuable skills and mindsets and if you’ve been helped by them, I’m not going to discount that.
But for me at the time, ACT reinforced my tendency to just shove down my fear and “do it anyway.” As it turns out, I’m pretty good at doing that.
I’ve used that skill many times in my life, and while it can be useful at times when something hard really needs to be done, it also can keep you stuck doing things that you deeply don’t want to be doing, and were never meant to do.
The problem, this keeps you from showing up in the world doing the work you were actually meant to do.
Example: Twice in my life, I’ve gotten certified to teach a group fitness class. Two separate times, I’ve paid for and completed the needed trainings, and taught a handful of classes before realizing I truly hate it and was not meant to do that. I just wanted to TAKE a group fitness class, be led in it, and the practical side of me wanted to get paid to work out. If I’d believed myself the first time it happened, I’d have avoided wasting time and money.
What if we Could Relate to Our Thoughts, or the Part of Us that Has these Thoughts, in a Radically Different Way?
There’s a time and a place for powering through the discomfort for sure, but looking back, I realized at times it made me ignore my body’s signals and just keep going, when I was frankly already quite skilled at that.
I had a sense even then, maybe things could be better.
With intuitive eating, I found it. I stopped believing things like “once you struggle with your eating or weight, you always will” or “healthy habits always will be hard. You will never actually want to do them.” Or one of my favorite statements, “you just need to train yourself to love salads.”
Now, I’m beginning to realize more and more there’s a whole world of potential for feeling better as it relates to our relationship with food and also beyond.
But we must also make sure we heal our deeper hurts. Our shame. Our deepest fears that have zero to do with food.
“Just think of food non-judgmentally.”
I think this happens so often. I think it happens when people are working to overcome an eating disorder or learn intuitive eating. They learn that they should stop judging foods, and instead just describe the food. But the judgments are often so strong, it feels like they will never “think of cake as just cake” versus “bad” or “unhealthy.”
The Hidden Sentences Are Deep
These hidden sentences don’t always make sense, and they aren’t always fun to uncover. But they are super fun to move past when we realize it’s about truly lasting healing and actually works.
So if we go back to Karen, the part of her that’s self critical and growing more and more frustrated with her as the day goes on, is a part that historically she’s probably tried to get rid of, but instead, lets try to understand it.
How Mindsets Really Impact Us
Before we come back to Karen, I want to talk to you about a body of research that really supports the power of harnessing our mindset to feel more alive.
Dr. Alia Crum is a psychologist at Stanford who really has done incredible work in the area of mindset and health. The thing I love about her work, is that it shows how mindsets impact us not just in terms of our mood, but also our biology.
Kid’s Allergy Treatments are more Effective with the Right Mindset
In this study, kids and their families were being treated for peanut allergies, where the kids would get injections of tiny amounts of peanuts as part of the treatment.
When kids and their families were told that symptoms are good (“it means the treatment is working”) they were less anxious, less likely to contact staff about symptoms, had fewer symptoms as doses increased, were less likely to skip doses (better adherence to treatment), and shower greater increases in IgG4 levels (meaning the treatment worked better for them!).
The Milkshake Study
Milkshake study – I’ve been obsessed with the milkshake study for years. It shows us that if you think of a food as a “diet food” then your body responds as if you’ve eaten fewer calories and you feel less satisfied. Compared to if you think of food as indulgent and tasty, your hunger hormone drops more quickly.
This is true even when the milkshake consumed has the exact same amount of calories.
Mindset and Exercise Study
Exercise and Genetics Study
A fascinating study found that getting feedback on one’s genetic risk for obesity as it relates to exercise actually impacted participants running endurance. This feedback and how they perceived their risk, appears to have had an even bigger impact than their actual genetic risk.
How to Stop Fighting Yourself and Develop a More Helpful Mindset
First, know that surface level mindset work isn’t as effective. If you are thinking,
“This food isn’t healthy. I shouldn’t be eating it. If I eat this of course I’m going to stay out of shape.”
Make sure you get to the deeper sentences first. Even though you may not logically feel like these things are true, most of us who are struggling with a behavior are at a deeper level quite self-critical. Saying things like,
“I’m bad, I’m lazy, I’m just making excuses.”
Mindset: “I’m going to gain weight and develop health conditions.” “My body isn’t safe at this size, this isn’t right or okay.” and “I clearly can’t do this”
Getting to Know That Part of You That Criticizes
Most of us have a part of us that’s critical.
Most of us aren’t a big fan of that part of us.
We are told “be compassionate!” and “love yourself like you would a child or a pet or a friend!”
This can feel utterly impossible, and therefore super defeating to many.
Why?
Because that part of you that criticizes you, actually isn’t YOU. But it is trying to protect you from something. Before trying to change that part and get it to be nicer, see if you can adopt a mindset of curiosity first.
Harnessing the Power of Mindset in Building Healthy Habits
- Build awareness. The first step in changing any pattern is in building awareness of what’s happening currently. Noticing the thoughts going through your mind, and ideally writing them down or sharing them with someone you trust (ideally a professional if you can find one!). For Karen, this comes back to just noticing the thought, “you idiot, you’re going to fail again.”
- Getting curious. Instead of immediately treating that part of you as something that needs to be changed, see if you can treat it like a loved one who is struggling. See if you can approach that part with curiosity and ask questions like “Why are you saying these mean things to me?” Note that if a part of you is still angry with the critic (which is common, another part wants the critic to just stop already), you’re less likely to be a helpful and honest answer. Just as if the loved one you approach feels judged or like you are trying to change how they do things, they often hold on tighter and aren’t super open with you.
- Working to understand the positive intention behind this part of you. Our self-critical parts are typically trying to protect us from something. And again, most of us have one. If you can truly approach it with curiosity or even some compassion, you might be surprised by what you learn. Here is a guided exercise with the developer of Internal Family Systems Therapy to do when you have time to safely sit down and do this in a more formal way. The guided exercises have the benefit of helping us get out of our logical thinking parts and more into our body to truly get curious about what’s there and believe ourselves, versus just thinking what we think the answer “should” be.
- Appreciate that part of you. Again, instead of jumping to try to change it’s negative mindset (believe me, I was tempted to do this too, but patience will pay off), as you learn what this self-critical part of you is trying to do, send it some appreciation.
- See what the part might like to do instead. If we had another way to protect you from hurt besides criticizing, and the self-critic could relax a bit, ask this part of you what it might like to do instead. While shifting mindset work can be incredible helpful and healing (e.g., Karen’s statement “I’m going to fail again” could be changed to directly the opposite statement, “I’m not going to fail again” and make a case for the new sentence. See how a shift like that might feel. If there’s a lot of resistance or if it feels incredibly hard, parts of you like your self-critic or even other parts might feel not fully safe to make that shift, and you can better understand or explore that.
For me and many of my clients lately, this Internal Family Systems model is offering a different approach to self-compassion, or to appreciating the parts of ourselves we have historically not liked very much (e.g., inner critic). I also have an angry part, and an overworking part that have historically been pretty shamed by me.
It’s allowed many of us to embody the idea of true self-compassion, as we work to get to know parts of ourselves and what they are trying to for us, and heal them in a newer and more lasting way.
Support Local Bookstores Near You!
Did you know that that if nothing slows their momentum, Amazon will have almost 80% of the book market by the end of 2025?
Look, I love the convenience of Amazon, but I’ve got a super cool way that you can support local bookstores and my blog and podcast simply by buying books like you already do! You can choose any bookstore on the list in the US (they plan to expand to other counties in the future) OR you can just let the donation get split between all stores. They have raised over 15 million dollars for local bookstores. On my bookshop, you will see my absolute favorite books related to health and wellness, courage and vulnerability, and even my favorite fiction and kids books!
My recent favorite related to achieving a deeper level of healing is No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model. This book and model of therapy has been very helpful to me personally and I’m also using it with clients and seeing great results.
So if you believe in supporting local businesses and want to support my blog and podcast, please consider buying your books through Bookshop from now on!
The Psychology of Wellness Bookshop Link.
Disclaimer: This blog and podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for individual professional advice or treatment, including medical or mental health advice. It does not constitute a provider patient relationship.
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