Cognitive Dissonance - Have you got it, and does it matter?

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And welcome to Change Your Relationship with Food, the podcast hosted by me, Kyla Holley. With many years experience as an eating disorder and bariatric therapist, I know exactly what it takes to help you break free from your diet history and. Music. Develop a more healthy relationship with food. Please follow this podcast to make sure you don't miss a thing.

Cognitive dissonance is a phrase that you may well have heard of in the past, but I wanted to talk about its relationship with food because if you have cognitive dissonance you will find that you often repeat the same behavior patterns over and over and having this can be kind of the driving force behind having quite a confusing and painful relationship with food.

So what is cognitive dissonance? It's a phrase that's used quite a lot sometimes in the the right context and sometimes completely in the wrong context. But it's a very simple idea, really. Cognition, thinking, dissonance, argument. So it's basically an argument that goes on within your thinking. Two points of view which argue against each other and both are in your head at the same time. And this does not make for a happy life.

I tend to look at this as a bit of of a good cop, bad cop relationship. So as far as food's concerned, see if this feels like a sort of familiar pattern to you. Bad cop comes in. Bad cop says, oh my God, you need to be good. You need to follow the rules. You need to have big, big rules around what you can eat and what you can't eat. And you must stick to those rules. Things like don't have anything with sugar in it.

Don't have have biscuits, don't have cakes, don't have chocolate, only eat these certain things. And you must stick to this because this is what's good for you. It's logical. It must happen. Generally, these rules kick on on a Monday morning because that's the law. And then you've got this side of you which is really determined. You know, this makes sense. This should happen. And then you can go along for so long agreeing with the bad cop in your head.

And then good cop comes along and good cop says, oh, go on. Look, just have one. You've really tried hard. You deserve a treat. You can start again tomorrow or you've really had a tough day or yay, something went great today. You should celebrate. You should get cakes for everyone at the office or you should buy a bottle of champagne pain on the way home or something that sort of tells you, look, I know this is going to make you feel better.

Because the truth of it is that following bad cop is kind of a bad place to be. You know, when you've got all these rules, when you're conscious of the fact that you must do this, you must do that. It's quite restrictive. You're quite inhibited. And also, you know, you can be quite miserable when you're following those rules. So this is quite a painful place to be. There's a lot of self-judgment with bad cop.

It can feel like you're in quite a judged place and it's quite painful having to follow all those rules. And then when good cop comes along and gives you a little bit of an out, good cop says, hey, take a rest. This is a bit much, isn't it? This is a bit full on. Why don't you take a little break for a couple of days? Why don't you do this, that and the other? Good cop is saying, look, I understand you. I know that you need a little bit of a rest.

But what happens is this internal argument starts up within you. And the internal argument is really painful for you because when you've listened to Good Cop and you've had that break and you're relaxing and you think, oh, I'll have this today and I'll start again tomorrow. Along comes Bad Cop again. And Bad Cop says, oh, you stupid person. What have you done? You're useless. You've got no willpower. Come on, get your game together.

And it starts nagging you again. And so we've got this argument inside of us because, of course, the bad cop and the good cop are parts of us. They're parts of our brain fighting against each other. When this argument is going on, you feel terrible. You feel stupid. You feel like a failure because one side of you thinks it knows what's best for you. The other side of you seems to come along and sabotage your efforts.

But the way that it does it, it says, I know what's best for you. I know you need a break. And in truth, both of these sides are doing this because they think they're helping you. Bad cop thinks it's helping you. You know, all you need is something to push you. You need something to drive you, making you stick to the rules. And then good cop comes along and says, look, what you need is a break. So ironically, both of them are acting within your best interest.

But the fact they're arguing with each other is what causes the problem in your head. Head and also ask yourself how does this feel in your body so connect with your body for a second some people might say well it's it's not in my body it's in my head. But just imagine this scenario. Imagine you're out for a walk one day and you turn a corner and in the street in front of you are two people having a big old argument, huge argument.

They're screaming at each other, they're shouting at each other, threatening to walk out, throwing things, calling each other names, things like that. Your immediate reaction, imagine you're walking, you turn a corner, you see this, your immediate reaction would be probably to stop. But think of that that imagery, think of how you would actually feel in your body. Would that tension within you go, you know, would you kind of tighten up when you saw this happened?

Would you feel a little bit scared perhaps? Would you feel as if you should intervene? Would you feel as if you should just turn around and walk in the other direction?

And imagine if that argument were going on inside your house between two of your family members they're shouting at each other they're screaming at each other they've got very different points of view and neither of them will budge and neither of them will compromise in any way whatsoever and how do you feel how uncomfortable does that make you feel to see people that you love fighting. Do you also feel that you need to take sides? Do you have to agree with one over the other one?

And what will it cost you if you do that, if you take one side over the other one? Just picture these scenarios and start to feel that tension in your body building up, that yucky kind of, oh, I don't like this feeling. It feels uncomfortable. It feels yucky. I want to get rid of it. Basically, it causes this discomfort.

Discomfort and then think what do you do every other time in your life when you get this yucky horrible discomfort this horrible feeling and for most of us what we do is we go you know what I'll eat something it will take my mind off this yucky discomfort and it will take me to somewhere pleasurable even if it's only just for a little while so what we tend to do when we have these these internal arguments going on in our head, is we tend to actually, ironically, turn to food.

The very thing that we're having the argument about is the very thing we tend to turn to as a way of resolving this internal argument. And then guess what happens? Well, bad cop says to you, oh, I can't believe what you've just done. What an idiot you are. You've got no willpower. You You see what you've just done. Come on, I know what's better for you. Tough love, toughen up, start again, get back on the program, whatever you're doing,

get back on Monday morning, you must stick to it. And then guess what? The whole thing plays out again. And this will actually never stop. I mean, how is it gonna stop? And think back in your life at how long this has been going on, how long you've been telling yourself, oh, I need to make changes. And then there's the other part of you that goes, oh, come on, give yourself a break. How long has that argument been going on inside of you? Is it five years? Is it 15 years?

For some of you, it may be 50 years. I know a lot of the people that come to me to see me for sorting out their relationship with food, sometimes they have had decades and decades of this feeling of, I could do better, I should do better, I must do better. And then the other side of them that goes, oh, but I need my treats. I need my looking after. I need my little rewards. I need these little niceties in life that make me feel good.

And the reason they make us feel good is the part of doing them is this kind of little rebellion. It kind of adds to the emotional context of what we're actually doing in that moment is the fact that it feels good. It's a rebellion. We've fought back. We've done something against this authoritative voice that's coming through to us. Quite often, we just go around and around and around doing this day after day, week after week, year after year, and sometimes decade after decade.

Now, what we need to find in order for this to stop is that little voice that lurks in the middle, the little voice that looks at both of these sides of the argument and just says, wait a second, time out. That voice of logic in the middle that doesn't give too much authority. It's not judgmental. It doesn't tell you you're an idiot or you've got no willpower or you must try harder, but it also doesn't baby you along and say, oh, but, you know, come on.

It's not a childish voice. It's not a kind of really policing voice. It's a more logical, understanding, non-judgmental, and perhaps even curious voice that sits in between these two. If we find that voice, which is also our voice, in the middle of those two, we can absolutely revolutionize our relationship with food. I did this quite a few years ago, and I'm completely admitting at this stage I'm not perfect. Sometimes the good cop comes on board.

Sometimes the bad cop comes on board. But most of the time, I manage to stay in the middle. So this takes a lot of practice. Don't expect to get this immediately. That middle voice, let's try and find it. This is a voice in the middle that actually doesn't have any rules around food. Not one. Not one rule you have to follow. Nothing is a bad food. Nothing is a good food. Nothing is a treat. Nothing is a downfall. I'm just thinking of all these words that I hear people say day in,

day out. None of that exists. What this is, is a curious, non-judgmental part of your mind that actually wants to discover what's going on, that actually wants to learn about you as a person. Who are you without all these rules? Who could you be without all these rules? This voice simply says, let's just see what tomorrow brings. Let's just see what dinner time brings. Let's just see what a night out with friends brings.

It's a mindful voice. So it asks questions, curious questions without judgment.

If you apply this voice to your everyday food intake. You'll wake up in the morning and you'll ask yourself questions such as, what do I fancy eating for breakfast? What am I in the mood for? What would be delicious at the moment? What would actually make me feel good? And I don't mean overindulging. What would make me feel good? What would set me up for the day? Something that satisfies my body, but also satisfies my brain. OK, so this is not about deprivation.

This is about actually satisfying your brain so it doesn't feel deprived. You ask yourself those questions in the morning and whatever answer comes up for you is the right answer. So if having a bowl of porridge is what your brain came up with and what your body came up with, that's exactly the right answer. If having toast comes up, then that's the right answer. If having bacon and eggs comes up, then that's the right answer.

Answer if having something you would never have dreamt of having comes up something like cheesecake. Again that's not the wrong answer you can have cheesecake for breakfast you've just really got to check in and go do I actually want cheesecake for breakfast am I enjoying eating cheesecake for breakfast and did that do everything that I wanted it to did it nourish my body did it nourish my my brain? Do I feel satisfied? So lots and lots of curious questions around this without judgment.

Now, since I started doing this, and as I say, I threw away food rules quite a few years ago, I could, if I wanted to, have cheesecake for breakfast. But to this day, I haven't yet done it because I could. And I hope that makes sense because there's no rules around it. There's no time, there's no place for cheesecake. I could have it for breakfast, but I'd have not because it's not one of those things that's coming to my brain when I've asked myself these questions this morning.

There's lots that I've learned on this journey. I'll share two interesting ones with you. One of them is that I don't really like coffee. What I discovered is I liked the idea of coffee. And this came from asking myself all these questions. I discovered that coffee was something I'd seen people have. I'd fallen into kind of the vision of what coffee was because people say, hey, do you want to meet for a coffee? That sounds like a fun time, doesn't it? Who wouldn't want to meet for a coffee?

Sounds great. I would stand in the queue in the morning, the barista queue at the local cafe, and you'd see all the same people and everyone would be chatting and waiting for their coffees. And you're chatting to the barista who's, you know, the barista's a nice man. He's saying, how's your day? What are you up to today? day. It's a pleasant atmosphere full of lots of go-getting people that are stopping in for their breakfast before they go off and do something.

In my mind, it's wildly productive and inventive and creative for the day. And I had grown to love that coffee culture. I love it. I love that idea of let's get a coffee and the little cup that you take away with you. And I love the idea of it. But what I started to do when I threw away food rules is I started to actually question, you know, what is it about the coffee I like? Is it the taste? Is it the heat of the coffee? Is it the fact that it's filling and satisfying?

And the more questions I asked myself about that coffee that I used to get every single morning, the more I realized that what I actually liked was the atmosphere, not the coffee. I want you to just be curious enough to get to that sort of point where you actually realise what it is that you like. Is it actually the substance at all? Or is it the sort of story that you have built around that substance?

Another thing, again, and I've covered chocolate before, but I had a bit of a passion for chocolate in the past. Loved chocolate would easily demolish one of those big family sized blocks of chocolate because I would just munch my way through the thing completely ignoring ignoring what was going on in my body, what was going on in my mind, because I would be mindlessly eating. I'd be doing something else. I'd be watching TV. I'd be typing away on the computer.

I'd be looking up something on the internet. I don't know anything else. And I wasn't paying attention to it. And again, when I threw away the food rules, part of my really big concern was if I don't have rules around chocolate, I'm going to go mad. I'm going to be be having like 10 bars a day. It's going to be crazy. The reality is when anybody enters into this kind of giving up rules.

And I've seen it happen with lots of the people that I've treated over the years, is that you do, for a limited time, you do actually go a little bit mad because there's no rules. And that fear in the back of your mind is, I'm going to go crazy with this and I'm never going to stop.

It takes a brave person to drive through that because that first day or two, you may actually go a little bit crazy, but very quickly that craziness disappears when you actually realize that there's no urgency anymore. You don't have to eat this stuff quickly. You don't have to hide it. There's no urgency because the value of that food has has suddenly decreased. It's not what it used to be. It's not something that invokes shame or guilt.

So therefore, you don't have to hide it. And if you don't have to hide it, you don't have to eat it quickly because you don't have to get rid of the evidence. So you relax around that food. And actually, the value that you place on it completely diminishes. Chocolate now for me is something that absolutely I have every now and again. I no longer demolish a whole huge family-sized bar of it, but occasionally I will buy a bar of chocolate.

Quite often what happens with that bar of chocolate is I'll get about halfway through it and then again the curious mind will kick in and go, is that enough now? Have you actually had enough or do you need more? And quite often at that halfway point, I'll go, no, no, I've satisfied whatever little urge I had about the chocolate and now I no longer need it. And what I'll do at that point is I'll often just fold up the wrapper and put it in my handbag.

And it's quite a nice discovery a few days later when I dive in my handbag for something else and I go, oh, I've got a half-eaten chocolate bar in there. And it's quite pleasant to discover in case I fancy eating it later that day, in case the mood strikes me. So these are things that I want you to consider.

What would happen if you stopped that argument in your head and went to a place and found that place in the middle, that non-judgmental, curious part of your mind that that says, I'm not going to create all the rules, but I'm also not going to let myself off the hook. I'm going to be responsible for what I eat in a no rules situation. I hope that makes sense. And if it doesn't, you might need to listen to this a second time to make sure that it kind of slots into your brain.

More next week. And next week, I believe we have a guest coming on. Thank you so much for your company today. I would also love it if you could follow this podcast. It really does mean a lot to me. Also, we have a six week online change your relationship with food course that you can take. Just visit www.acfeb.com and click on the ACFEB and me courses link.

Link there's also a journal and a workbook available on amazon and you'll find that link in our bio i really hope you can join me again next week goodbye. Music.