Hey and welcome to the Mindful Balance Podcast, your guide to stop emotional eating and overeating and transform your relationship with food. I am Rachel, a nutrition and emotional eating coach, and I'm here to help women like you navigate through the complex world of eating habits, health, mindset, and emotional well-being. I hope that each episode here will be a step on your journey towards a healthier you by shedding light on different aspects of nutrition and emotional eating.
I am here to take out the need for quick fixes by showing you how it can be done differently. Whether you are just starting out or looking to deepen your understanding, you are in the right place. And if you're ready, let's dive in. Hey, and welcome back to the podcast. Today we're talking about sleep and your overall habits at night.
Now, I know that everyone always talks about morning routine, so this may sound like a bit of an unusual topic, but I promise that I will explain how it all makes sense. If you know me, even a little bit, you know that I love to sleep and it's really a top priority for me. I'm not a night owl at all. And in recent years, I have been really the happiest version of myself when I am able to get to bed early. I also wake up super early in the morning, but that's a story for another day.
Sleep is something that can affect your eating, your habits, your mental health, your motivation, your energy, your focus, and just in general, your mental capacity, and so many things that will affect your overeating. It will affect your brain's performance, your mood, and your health. If I were able to poll you right now as you listen and ask you, I would guess that you too have noticed the link between overeating and making decisions that you don't love and the state of being tired.
Because it is so important, I want to talk about it today because I honestly feel that it is part of the solution that is often overlooked or underrated. Now I am obviously not a sleep expert, so I'm not going to be getting into all the science of sleep or sleep disorders. And as always, if you suspect that you might have a sleep disorder or an issue that goes beyond what I'm talking about here today, then please, please talk to your doctor or a sleep specialist.
What I am going to help you with is your mindset around sleep, specifically you not wanting to go to sleep and how that plays a role in nighttime eating. Now, most people want to go to bed at a certain time. Why? Because they want to be able to get up at a certain time in the morning and still get enough sleep. We know that sleep is important, but many people have a hard time actually going to bed. And there are a few common reasons for this phenomenon.
In real life, having a hard time going to sleep may look like you are getting ready to go to bed, let's say it's 10 p.m., maybe even being in bed already, but having a hard time putting your phone away. So now it is an hour later and you're still scrolling and you're still awake. For other people, it may be that they don't even make it to the bedroom. You're on the couch in your living room and you can't even get yourself to get up. So what do you do?
You stay there until way too late than you intended. If this sounds like you, it might be that you just haven't gotten enough pleasure, fun, and relaxation, or just time for yourself on that day. You think that you haven't gotten enough, enough of something. So what do you do? You stay up and you don't go to sleep so that you can get more. This is what is called sleep procrastination.
And sleep procrastination is essentially when someone puts off going to bed at an intended time, even when there's no valid reason to stay up. It's like when you tell yourself that you're going to bed early tonight. I am going to bed, right? We all make those statements. But then you end up watching just one more episode, right? Just one more episode. And it's one more episode and one more episode. And I will even call it the one more episode syndrome. Okay?
So despite feeling tired and knowing that you should sleep, what do you do? You keep delaying it. It often happens because the evening hours feel like it's the only time to enjoy some personal time, some personal freedom, the only time that you have to maybe unwind. So what do you do? You cling to that time just a little bit longer, even at the cost of your sleep.
And even if you know that going to bed is what your body needs, you think that if you go to bed, then the next thing that will happen is work again or something that you are dreading. And staying up almost kind of feels like you're able to delay that dreadful next day. So you fall into pleasure scarcity. You tell yourself, "I don't have enough time for relaxation."
And if you want to change that, kind of like take a step back from that scarcity mindset, there are three ways that this can be fixed. It's either about changing your thoughts. It is about changing what pleasure means to you or changing how much pleasure you get. And I will explain. So one thing that can be super helpful is to actually get more true quality pleasure in your life and not just at night. Now you might say, "Well, there isn't time for more. I don't have time."
So I want to challenge that and see if there really isn't more time. Often, we do have more time and it doesn't even need to be, let's say, a day at the spa. But I would bet that if you sat right now and had to create a list of five things that you would do if you had time in the evening, you would find something that works for you. Sometimes it only requires five minutes of intentional time for yourself. A client of mine just told me that she loves to read at night, but she doesn't have time.
And there are many things that are competing for her attention at night. I'm sure you can all relate to that. So we did a little experiment and she found out that she was actually sitting on social media for about one and a half hours every evening without even noticing it. The evening kind of looked like one long stretch of busyness, but there were here and there enough time that she could apply towards reading. We do have more time, we're just not using it wisely.
Time and it's going to be maybe a little bit abstract, but time is just a reflection of our priorities. And I say it really with zero judgment because I myself also say often that I don't have time. But if we're honest with ourselves, it is just a reflection of our priorities. If we're in the habit of doing things a certain way every night, it does require being intentional about using our time in a different way.
It's also important to talk about chores when we talk about lack of time because it's common for women specifically, I think, to prioritize chores that don't need to be done necessarily right now when it would be much more beneficial for them to do something that's a quality pleasure and a quality self-care, something fun for yourself or something that's relaxing.
This is something that I also struggle with often because especially if you grew up in a family that focuses on achievements and doing things and being productive and efficient, it gets hard to be okay with just being or resting. I know I have to constantly tell myself that relaxing and doing nothing is important and it doesn't mean that I'm being lazy or I am wasting time.
And I am being intentional in changing that way of thinking for myself, by the way, because it has been tattooed, I feel, on my brain since I was little because your body and your brain will demand rest and pleasure. So even if you think that not doing something or doing something for yourself is you being lazy, it is time to practice thinking in a different way.
If you don't take time to take care of your needs, then your body will demand it and usually it will look like you eating for pleasure. Now please don't get me wrong because I am not saying that doing the laundry or the dishes, cooking or even answering work emails isn't important. But I do think that if you are being fair with yourself and you're being honest, you also need to prioritize your self-care. If you want to stop using food as your only way to have this like quote unquote you time.
If you are proactive about making sure that you are getting enough pleasure, you will be more willing to end your day and go to bed and not think that you need more, that you need something more. You have had enough. Then there is also value to the type of pleasure that you're experiencing. If it's not quality, if it's not what you really want to do, then you won't be satisfied with it and you will keep searching for more into the night.
It's like with food, when you're not eating what you actually want, you keep searching for that satisfaction by eating more and more foods that you don't really want. So you never get it. You never have enough. But if you just want to eat what you want, right? If you get to eat the food that you truly love, then satisfaction is so much easier to get. If you're not getting satisfaction with how your evening goes, then change it.
If you always eat for pleasure, but then you feel badly about yourself, then change how you spend your time in the evening and find something to do that is totally worth it. And when I say totally worth it, it means without the guilt that comes afterwards. If eating is the only thing that comes to mind, it's time to explore options. You have alternatives. Try something else or something new. See if you like it. And if you don't, then not a big deal. Try something else.
If you don't have any ideas, seriously, like Google some ideas or ask people that know you and know what you would like. And then there is also the changing your thought piece. And this is about what you are telling yourself. When you tell yourself that you haven't had enough pleasure, that you haven't had enough fun or relaxation, you're going to feel deprived. You're going to feel sad or disappointed.
And again, you're going to stay up and try to kind of fix it or get more fun and you time in order to reach enough. But I have seen people so many times, and I hear it all the time, that they can never reach that enough. They never feel like they had enough satisfaction and enough relaxation. People don't want to go to bed because that means that they will have to start again tomorrow, going through an entirely new, long, exhausting day. And nobody wants to do that, right?
When you don't want to do that, obviously, you're not going to go to sleep. And you will stay up late and you will eat. It is quiet, right? Think about your evening. It is really like quiet time, usually for most people in their homes. Nobody's watching, nobody's judging. And people tend to just wait to get that maximum amount of me time by eating more and more and more. It's never enough because people keep telling themselves that it's not enough.
When you think that one cookie isn't enough, that one serving isn't enough, then 10 pieces aren't going to be enough. But it could be enough if you decide that it is. So you need to start changing your thoughts and start making going to bed attractive. And tell yourself that if you go to bed, then you won't make it worse by adding being tired and feeling guilty for all the foods that you have eaten for the purpose of delaying the next day.
I want you to be honest with yourself about what you really want most. And I want you to choose that for yourself. There are good reasons to stay up and there are good reasons to go to bed. Which one is serving you best right now? A lot of the time, people think that it's cool to stay up late and it is uncool to go to bed early. I know that sometimes I really feel that. I really sometimes think that I am very much uncool by going to sleep early or that it's weird to go to bed early.
But these are all just opinions that we have. And you get to choose what to prioritize for you. And if you need to change the story that you have about going to bed late or early, then do that. Then make small gradual changes. For example, if you decide that going to bed early is going to serve you better, then go to bed 15 minutes earlier every few days. Allow your brain to get used to that new time and the new schedule.
And that really goes for any change that you're trying to make, especially with your eating. Don't make drastic changes in what you're eating. It is so much better and more sustainable to make small gradual doable changes that barely even feel like a change. It will be so much easier because your brain is not going to feel threatened.
So now that we talked about sleep procrastination, there is another piece that I want to talk about that's also related to what we do in the evening and what our night routine looks like. And that is the tendency to give up at the end of the day, which is also such a common struggle at night. Most of us feel really motivated at the start of the day, right? We wake up in the morning and we're like, "I can do this." But then by the end of the day, it becomes a habit to give up.
And I'm going to help you stop doing this as part of changing what happens at night. So let's take a step back and think about what happens to us in the morning. In the morning, we usually wake up and we feel super motivated. We have our goals, we feel all kind of pumped up about them, we have beliefs about ourselves, we have a plan and we're ready to go. And let's go, let's get it done.
But as the day goes on, we somehow lose our motivation and we start finding more and more excuses for not doing the things that we planned on doing at the beginning of the day. So we all of a sudden decide that it's okay if we don't do it today. We care less and we don't accomplish what we wanted to do. And there are so many ways this can show up for you. This kind of like, "I don't care anymore."
It can be skipping a meal or allowing yourself to react to stress by eating foods that you didn't really initially want to eat, or just even talking negatively about yourself. But what it comes down to is that you start off doing super well, but at some point you stop. In the morning, you have all these like positive thoughts about what's possible for you during the day, which is why you start off with positive emotions and those emotions lead to positive actions.
But then as the day goes on, life happens, happens to all of us, and things don't go as planned. Your emotions and your thoughts start to shift. Circumstances maybe present themselves in a way that you didn't anticipate or that you didn't prepare for, and your energy levels kind of like start decreasing. So basically things change internally for you and not in a good way. So this is what I want to offer you as a way to change that pattern.
When it gets hard, when you don't feel like it anymore, when you're not feeling like the same emotions that you were feeling at the start of the day, and you aren't thinking in the same way that you were earlier, when life kind of throws you a curveball, when you are not as energized as you were in the morning, what you need is compelling and important reasons to use the energy that you do have to do the things that you committed to doing. You need to have a good reason and not just have it.
You need to tell it to yourself anytime you are ready to quit. Why are you doing the work that you're doing? What is your end goal? What will life look like when you achieve it? Your reasons will help you get out of the place where you just do not care anymore, or you tell yourself that you've messed up and you will start again tomorrow.
But there is another thing that you can do to help yourself if you are getting into that kind of like negative place by the end of the day, and your mental powers like motivation kind of diminish. And this is to avoid decision fatigue. As humans, we are making thousands of decisions. Somebody told me, I think it's 60,000. Maybe I read it somewhere. I'm not really sure. But the point is that we're making thousands and thousands of decisions throughout our day. Not just about food.
It's not specifically to what we're eating, but it is about where we're going to eat, what we're going to eat, how much we're going to eat. There's so many decisions, which road to take to work, should we exercise or not? There's like many, many, many decisions that we're making with everything in our lives, with our jobs, with our free time, our relationship, friendships, families, like chores, errands. There's just so many decisions that we need to make.
And every decision that you're making depletes your energy. So it's really not shocking that when it's nighttime, you don't have any more of the capacity to make decisions that you are proud of, and you're really done. You feel like you're done. You don't want to make those decisions anymore, especially if they're not easy decisions. If this is something that you see happen to yourself, what can help you tremendously is making as many decisions as possible for yourself ahead of time.
Instead of making all your eating decisions at the moment, you can make many of them in the morning or even the night before when you have the energy or when you're emotionally feeling good and not reacting out of cravings. This way, you don't have to make decisions when you're tired or you're feeling negative. When you have a plan in mind, the only decisions that you have to make is whether or not to follow it. It's like you take all those decisions and you turn them into one single decision.
Do I follow my plan or do I not follow the plan? And you can even make that decision easier on yourself by planning foods for yourself that you enjoy eating. This looks like maybe writing on a piece of paper, "This is what I will eat for lunch and dinner tomorrow, and these are the snacks that I'm going to eat." And make it something that you look forward to, not this sad diet plan that has, I don't know, plain chicken breast and steamed broccoli. That's not a plan that you will likely follow.
And if you need or if you know that you will need something sweet every night after dinner, then be honest with yourself and put that one treat or put that one cup of ice cream on your plan so you will be able to help your future self be successful and not feel deprived. And so you don't need to kind of rebel or use self-sabotage at the end of your night. Make the end of your day as easy and realistic as possible.
You don't want to be overambitious and have great ideas that will never work because they're not realistic, given how we usually feel towards the end of the day. And even if you don't follow your plan, like you made a plan and something happened and you didn't follow your plan to a T, it's okay. You haven't messed up. You are learning and practicing a new evening routine, both with eating and thinking in a new way. Your day doesn't have to be perfect.
And a lot of the time, it's not going to be perfect. And that's okay. You can still follow your evening as planned without making it mean that you've messed up and completely give up on your decisions or the decisions that you made in the morning or the night before. People overeat at the end of the day because they're tired. They need to feel good before the day ends and another day starts.
And you can take care of yourself by creating a new way to manage your evenings and give yourself the tools to stop saying, "I screwed it. I messed it up again and I will start again tomorrow morning." You don't have to go completely off track. You don't have to lose sight of what you really want and give up on achieving what you want to achieve. You absolutely can create a new routine for yourself and therefore new results one day at a time.
Sending you lots of love and I will talk to you next time. Take care. Bye-bye. Thank you for listening to the Mindful Balance Podcast today. I hope you enjoyed our conversation and found inspiration to find your unique balance and growth. If you found value in this episode and feel inspired to make a change, I would love for you to subscribe to my show.
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