Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. We’ve got so much to talk about today. I want to talk about if you’re using food to numb or push down feelings. What we need to talk about about that. I want to talk about being grounded and what being grounded has to do with breaking emotional eating habits or not binging or overcoming overeating. Because actually being grounded has everything to do with these things.

Let’s be real, we tend to live in the past or in the future. We tend to be worrying about what’s already happened or focusing on what is to come or worried about what might come in the next hours or days or even years from now. And in fact, we live in a world where we are rarely present.

Where we are rarely simply or solely present. We’re encouraged to spend our present moments distracted and multitasking or scrolling on our phones. It is easy to be numb to what is actually happening now. Because we’re so busy. We’re doing three things at once. And it is so easy to actually not know what’s happening right now in our bodies with our feelings, with our thoughts. And even with that plate of food that is sitting in front of you.

We live in a world that encourages us not to be present and makes it very easy to be on autopilot. You can’t be deliberate if you’re not present. If you’re not present, you’re not thinking things through. So your behavior is likely to be a reaction that you didn’t think through. When you’re not present in the moment, you just do without thinking.

And that just doing Is doing what’s familiar. That just doing is following the neural pathways that are most deeply ingrained and most familiar and easiest for your brain. So you just do without deciding, without evaluating, without being curious about why or what the alternatives are. So think for a minute about how this works with eating.

When you’re not present, you can’t be deliberate. When you’re not present, you mindlessly wander into the kitchen. Or you mindlessly open the cupboard and open the jar and take a handful. Or reach into your desk drawer for that piece of chocolate. You eat the food on your plate and you reach for seconds without even wondering how it is feeling to eat it. How it’s feeling in your body. Whether it even tastes good.

As an aside, I can’t tell you the number of women that I’ve talked to who’ve told me about some food that they really love. And then have done an experiment where they really mindfully savor the food and they found out it’s usually some kind of processed food or candy or something like that. But, where they actually mindfully and intentionally eat the food and find out it’s not nearly as delicious as they were reactively believing.

When you aren’t present, you can’t really taste your food. And you don’t have the ability to discern whether you’re satisfied. Whether you’re full or hungry. Or even if you’re becoming physically uncomfortable because you’ve eaten too much. When you’re not grounded, when you’re not fully present, you also just accept the thoughts and the stories that come up in your brain as fact.

These thoughts and stories that just electrical impulses in your brain, and they come up and you just believe them because you’re not fully present. There’s no examining them because you’re not paying attention. You’re reacting, you’re functioning on autopilot. And so these thoughts and beliefs come up and you accept as truth things like, I really need to eat these chips to finish the project.

I deserve this cookie. Which you won’t even taste because you’re not grounded and present. But I deserve this cookie because it will make me feel good. But you’re not quite paying attention to how it tastes or how you feel anyway. So the story isn’t really complete. When you are on autopilot, it becomes really easy to believe things like, it feels great. It’s freedom to eat as much as I want.

Even though when you eat all that you want past the point of fullness, you don’t sleep well. Right? You don’t sleep well after you eat all the pizza and you’re miserable with yourself in the morning because you’re bloated and gassy and frustrated. But your brain, in that moment, as a reaction, accepts the story that it feels great to eat as much as I want, or more than I want, or the whole thing.

When you’re not fully present, when you’re not grounded, it is so easy to just accept as fact, right, that has been handed down on high. It is a fact that it won’t make a difference. My day’s already ruined. I can’t do this anyway. There’s nothing I can do about this. If we could download and examine the unexamined thoughts and beliefs and ways of talking to yourself and the choices that you reactively make when you are not in the present moment, you might be appalled.

You would probably be appalled because you’re a human being. And human beings tend to have these reactive thoughts and beliefs that don’t serve them all the time. Not being present isn’t serving you. It may momentarily feel good. It is not serving you. In the big picture.

I know eating is easy. That’s why overeating habits and emotional eating habits become so easy. Sometimes we turn to food or eating too much food because it feels like the easiest way to cope. It’s simple. It’s accessible. Eating what we crave satisfies a yearning, and there are chemical reactions that comfort and soothe and calm us for a very short while.

Also, we live in a world, especially right now. There are a lot of circumstances in this world that might be triggering you to reach for something to eat. You are more easily triggered when you’re not grounded.

Triggered, think about it, being triggered as a reaction. When you are in a place where you’re not paying attention, because you’re not in the present moment, it is really easily to be triggered into a reaction. Think about this idea of being grounded as something that gives you the ability to take a deep breath.

To slow things down. To slow things, including your decisions and your behaviors, slow them down. To consider options, and then to choose what you really want to do. To be able to see the big picture. To in the moment, remember how your future self will be or might be impacted by what you choose right now. Right? To see the whole array of things.

I know there are some moments where you might just want to react. It might feel like nothing else is going to help, or you just don’t want to be present. And you might reactively want to eat because you want to make the feelings or the circumstances not be in the front of your mind, at least for the moment.

But stick with me because there are some simple moves that you can make to help with emotional eating and overeating, even in these circumstances. The immediate temptation might be to escape. That’s human. The immediate temptation might be to zone out or numb out or turn off. But when you give in to that immediate temptation to escape or zone out, it is like that momentary reaction that you have to just finish the whole bag of Oreos because you started.

In the moment you might have a sugary rush. You might be able to escape your feelings. But a few hours later, the situation is the same. You used the Oreos, you pressed pause, you zoned out, but nothing changed about your actual circumstances. At least nothing changed for the better.

Okay, so what’s the alternative to mindless eating or to endless emotional eating and to the weight gain that adds this whole other layer of frustration that comes with all this reactive eating? What is the alternative, especially in these moments or in the moments in history where there’s stress and overwhelm and so much that it feels like you can’t control?

The alternative is to find your power in the present. You find your power by becoming present. By grounding yourself. By gathering yourself in, and this is what grounding yourself has to do with ending battles with food and overeating and emotional eating.

What I am seeing all around me and in myself with the people I work with, with the people in the world is the importance of finding simple, reliable ways to feel anchored and grounded or to get anchored and grounded. Being anchored and grounded means we are present. When you’re anchored and grounded, you’re in your body.

You can literally and figuratively feel the ground beneath your feet. You’re grounded. And because you’re present, you know what you’re feeling. You know what you’re thinking. You know what you’re needing. Or you know that you don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling or needing. Because you’re present.

And when you know these things or know that you don’t know these things, that allows you to respond and to take care of yourself. Being grounded allows you to make choices. And not just do the autopilot behavior. Being grounded allows you to ask questions. Being grounded allows you to realize the things you don’t know the answer to so you can seek new information.

numbness or not being grounded, not being in the present. These things make it impossible to identify what you need. You cannot know what you need when you’re numbing out. And when you’re numbing out, when you’re not present, and you don’t know what you need, or what you’re feeling, or what you’re wanting, or what you’re thinking. You can’t take care of yourself.

So what I have for you in the rest of this episode are some simple ways to get grounded instead of numbing out or distancing yourself or reacting with food. Simple ways. Okay. And they, many of these are simple things that do not take a lot of time.

First one, super easy. Stop and take 10 deep, slow breaths. That’s it. Just come into your body. Get grounded. You can journal. Journal for five minutes every morning. You can have a whole plan. You can use it as a time to check in and to notice how you’re feeling or just write whatever comes up. Journaling, stopping, and writing creates presence.

You can do it with eating. Decide to eat a mindful meal. Tune in. Get rid of the distractions. Put your phone away. Tune in with all your senses and experience being present. Paying attention allows you to feel satisfied. It helps you know what’s going on inside your body. You get to taste. Eat a mindful meal. Try that one out.

Another thing you can do is to give yourself more space. Give yourself space. Even a few minutes in between all the activities. Let yourself have space to change gears instead of charging from one thing to the other. Right? Zoom call to zoom call without a break. Or overlapping things, always being late, grabbing a snack as your transition. Give yourself an actual transition.

Sometimes it is really grounding to create a sense of order or control. So one thing that can help you get grounded sometimes is to look for an easy, small place to create order. Little, think little, think small, think doable. Organize a shelf in your closet. Clean off your desktop.

These simple things can help to build a feeling of effectiveness. Right? Purposefulness. So think about a purposeful action that has meaning to you. Check your voter registration status or make a plan to vote or contact someone in your life and encourage them to vote if the political situation is getting to you or stressing you out. Donate to something that you care about. Think about the specific action you can take in the present that helps you feel some order that helps you feel some effectiveness.

You can ground yourself with positive things. Make a list of things you’re grateful for, or make a list of things that are going well. Perspective is grounding. Taking ownership of the perspective you’re going to have right now can be very grounding. Instead of creating a to do list, which can create overwhelm. overwhelm, not only in the moment, but overwhelm about the future.

Go right to your calendar. Enter the to do’s that need to be done into a specific place in your schedule. Give them a specific day and a time slot. So you have a sense of having taken care of them. This can feel incredibly grounding. Instead of having this future, this to do list that just feels vague and like all this stuff is spinning in your head, give it a place.

Spend 15 minutes preparing for something that helps you be at your best. Make your lunch, lay out your workout clothes. Plan what you’re going to wear tomorrow. But create a space where you can spend quiet time in the mornings. Look for places where you’re craving structure. Where order would feel good and start to create small rituals that are manageable with how your life is now.

One thing I love about creating these kinds of structures or rituals is that you can rinse and repeat. When you create a repeating routine, it gives you ongoing ways to keep regrounding, to keep coming home to yourself. To keep getting present.

And then let’s talk about connection. Connect with somebody you trust. This can be so powerfully grounding. Spending time with somebody else, even virtually can be very grounding. It is. It is very present. It can feel very present to be in the presence of another person. Physical touch is very grounding.

Taking your thoughts out of your head and talking them through with somebody else. It’s very grounding. Think about it. You got all this stuff ricocheting around in your brain and you put it into words and you share it with another person. That feels different, doesn’t it?

Sometimes the simplest thing you can do to feel more grounded is to start noticing when you aren’t grounded. Or when you don’t feel grounded. It’s paradoxical, but the act of tuning into how you feel, whether it is peaceful or stressed or anxious or ungrounded, the act of tuning in is actually grounding. Becoming more aware of your thoughts and your feelings and your physical sensations will bring you into your body. And that is you being more present.

Look, we are adaptive human beings. And so we choose to not be grounded for sometimes compelling reasons. Being present and grounded these days isn’t always easy. The problem is numbing and not being grounded and not being present isn’t a helpful solution either. And if you’re listening to this podcast, you probably aren’t happy with the habits that are keeping you numb and on autopilot. Or that you’re feeling triggered into because you’re not grounded. But being present and grounded isn’t easy, especially these days.

These are challenging times, but disappearing yourself doesn’t help. Ignoring your feelings and your needs, not being aware of them is hurting you. And overeating is never a solution that lasts. So, one other important way to feel more grounded is to get support when you need it. If it feels like too much, there are professionals who can help you.

There are communities who can help you. And you know what? You don’t even always need to know what you need. A group member showed up at a Zoom coaching session the other day feeling ungrounded. She showed up and she said something like, hello, I’m here, I’m here, I’ve been missing in action for a while, but I know I need to get settled in again.

She needed to feel grounded. She said, I didn’t even know how to get started with how to get started again. So I just came here. I came to the coaching session. Because, and she, here’s what she said. She said, even though I see many new faces here, I don’t know all of you. I know you are my people. I know we’re in this together.

This is what she needed to get grounded. This is what she needed to get present. This is what she needed. Right? To get grounded so she could figure out her next step. So she could figure out more about what she was needing and feeling and wanting. If you think support might feel grounding, don’t hide.

Give yourself permission to give yourself what you need. And that’s so important. I think I’m going to end this episode right here.

I’ll talk with you soon.