Why You Feel Out Of Control Around Food And What To Do About It

Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness , nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body . Hello , hello . Welcome back to another episode of your strongest body , betsy here . Thank you , as always , for being here . We're going to jump right into the episode .

Today we're talking about feeling out of control around food , the three biggest reasons that you could be feeling that way and what we're going to do to change it .

This is a really common concern of clients of mine and of people who have fitness goals this idea that all their hard work in the gym is going to waste because they feel out of control around their food decisions or they are on a constant roller coaster of good , good , good , good eating that devolves into bad eating .

If you know me , you know that I don't believe in good or bad eating . I believe in a kind of fluidity , a kind of continuum of different kinds of foods , different kinds of reasons why we eat , different ways in which we use nutrition and meet different needs in our life . But I also understand that feeling of being out of control and you're probably right .

You probably are sabotaging your fitness progress with your nutrition decisions , especially if you feel out of control . Because I always say this and this is an important thing Eating for your nutrition , I'm sorry , eating for your fitness goals isn't hard . It just requires focus , it requires awareness and it requires planning .

When you are feeling out of control around food , it is indicative to me that you have none of those earlier things . We have to look at whether or not it is a quantity issue , whether it is a presence issue or whether it is unlearning our beliefs around food .

Let's get into the three biggest reasons you could feel out of control around food and then let's talk about what we can do differently . So , number one , the number one reason is because you don't eat enough .

You do not eat enough food and then you reach points in your day or in your week when you are ravenous , and when you are ravenous , you have reached a point where you are out of control because your body is begging you for fuel . This is beyond emotional needs . This is beyond what kinds of food you like .

It is about your body's hunger and need to survive , and that is part of what is happening with our hunger signals . They are helping us manage our energy levels , manage our ability to show up and do the activities that we are doing , manage our ability to recover from those activities .

And so if you aren't eating enough , you are getting to the point where your body is having to alert you in a kind of Threat level . Midnight is the only thing I can think of . I don't know if you watch the Office , but there's a thing called threat level midnight . Your body is threat level midnight and it is trying to alert you . It's ringing the alarms .

And when it's ringing the alarms , you're not going alright . What would feel best in my body right now ? What would feel best for the next three hours of my day ? It's not doing that . It's saying feed me now . And the signals in which it is feeling satiated are almost delayed .

They're delayed at that point because you have forced yourself to get to this point where you are refilling these empty stores , and that's not a perfect analogy per se , but it is a part of it , and so that's just something you have to think about . You have to think about are you eating enough ?

And for a lot of people people who have fitness and nutrition goals , especially those who are trying to decrease their calories or go into what we call a calorie deficit individuals who are trying to do that intentionally tend to restrict their calorie intake a lot early in the day .

Like I said before , we get this in our mind , this idea of good foods and bad foods , and so we also get in our minds the idea that we're either good with our nutrition or we're bad with nutrition .

And so folks who are trying to calorie restrict will get into a place where they are being quote-unquote good for breakfast and they have less food than they need , and they're being quote-unquote good at snack time , and so they're having light food that doesn't include any protein , that doesn't include any fat . That's all fruits and vegetables .

Not that fruit and vegetables are bad . You just might . You might notice that you don't feel satiated from that alone . They have a lunch that they packed and it's a little bit low calorie to the point where they're still feeling hungry , and then they get to about 4 pm and they're starting to feel the urge to eat more and frustrated with that feeling .

If you're in the mindset where you feel like you're quote-unquote doing good and then you're starting to feel like you can't think about anything else , it's starting to get overwhelming and you probably get into this cycle where you're like I can't believe that I did all this stuff and I feel this hungry and I don't know what to do .

You're like I'm gonna be good , I'm gonna be good , I'm gonna be good . That constant record , broken record playing . And then you get to dinner and eat more than you planned because you're feeling particularly over hungry and you couldn't wait to make the meal you had to order and you ordered more than you wanted .

And then , because you did that and it didn't go exactly as planned and you're still hungry , you're eating something afterward . You're just eating and eating and eating at the end of the day . And this could be within a day , this could be within a week , this could be within a month .

If we are calorie-restricting ourselves to the point where we are feeling so hungry , we are going to feel out of control when that threat level midnight urge occurs , in that we have reached a point where our body is saying I need food now . It doesn't allow you for that planning . It doesn't allow you for that mindfulness .

So that's one of the big places you have to look at your intake and decide whether or not you're getting enough food . Now , I know this can be tricky , because I think there are reasons where you may want to be eating a little less to reach your goals .

That is why slow and sustainable progress is important , and that is why understanding the components of a satisfying meal , as well as the components needed in your overall diet to feel energy and recovery and all of those things , are important . It's not just about cutting things out of our diet or or eating less .

It is a more nuanced and like layered thing , and so you got to learn that . You have to learn that . Next , the next . I'm just sorry I'm shifting my chair a lot . The next reason is that you are feeling out of control around food is because you aren't eating mindfully when you're eating .

So you feel you may be feeling out of control because you didn't even notice how much you were eating . That is really common .

Because we get distracted , we don't always leave space for ourselves to eat mindfully , whether that be because we have very busy schedules , whether that be because we try to multitask , whether that be that we just haven't prioritized the experience of actually enjoying our food , like that's part of it too .

Part of eating food sometimes is actually giving yourself the time to experience the textures and flavors and components of our food so that we actually enjoy it .

A lot of times , similar to that last sort of example I gave , when we are , quote-unquote , trying to be good , we have taken all the flavors out of our foods , we have taken all the interesting textures out of our foods , we have taken all the stuff that we like out of food so that we can quote-unquote I say it over and over again be good .

What if mindfully eating meant eating in a way that allowed us to get the nutrients we need , to get the energy we need , as well as the tastes and flavors that we like ? And so eating more mindfully may be eating a little bit slower , eating in a little bit , with little less distraction .

This also allows you to get over that feeling of a lack of control , because you have the ability , if you're eating mindfully , to say I think I'm feeling full or I feel like I could eat a lot more , but if I take two minutes and just rest and kind of sit and think about my , you know , bring my awareness to my body .

I may not feel that way and it might be just that my mind is racing . It feels like it's so obvious and almost too simple to be effective . And that is where where the magic is in its effectiveness , because the simple stuff is the thing that gets us to where we want to go .

And so if you aren't eating mindfully , you can very easily slip into a place where you have ignored all of your own hunger and fullness cues and you are Out of control around food because you have no awareness around it . So that's reason number two , and we're going to try to employ some of those mindfulness strategies .

And then reason number three , that you feel you may feel out of control around food is because you are holding on to a restriction mindset , and this one is complicated and it takes a long time to Overcome and it takes work to overcome it .

But I it's one of the things that I feel like is my specialty and what I work with people on Nutrition on is this idea that when we restrict things , we literally make them more appealing . We make them so much more appealing and I want to tell you that when you learn the foundations of , of Performance for life nutrition , that's what I call it .

I call it performance for life because you are getting you , you're learning the elements of Nutrition in terms of reaching your fitness goals , of supporting your activities , as well as a life that is really rich in Experiences , in relationships and enjoy .

I I know I talk about this at length , but , like life is too short for you Not to like your food either , ah , if you love tilapia and rice , bless you . But , like for me , that is not gonna bring me the kind of joy that I deserve as a human being with with limited time on this earth . So it's about it . I .

Balance is a word I try not to use , because balance suggests that there's a point where the scales sort of like Truly reach balance , whereas I believe this is more of a , a Wobble board or a balance board , or like , if you , if you're looking watching somebody in , like a circus , balance on the I don't know what they're called like like a unicycle , and you're

like balancing up there it's sometimes you're leaning forward , sometimes you're leaning back , sometimes you're shifting your weight to your the side , because there is no perfect balance . We have to constantly shift and move to find that sort of Position in which we can manage all of it , and so it's not Simple , and yet it is .

It's less work than you are making it out to be , and that is because , by restricting food , you are asserting what you believe is control over your diet , and your natural instincts , like a teenager with their parent , is to rebel against that kind of restrictive control . There is a way .

When you learn this kind of balance , when you learn this performance , nutrition that's performance for life you also find a way to exist around the foods that you felt out of control about .

I hear a lot of times like I just can't keep that in my house because I can't control myself around it , and that is a strategy that has been taught by a lot of people and like works in some cases , I guess .

But wouldn't you be happier , wouldn't life be almost more enjoyable , if you could have that thing around and you could eat it when you wanted and leave it when you don't ? Like I have so many people who have .

I had somebody come to my home I will not talk about who it is Come to my home at around Halloween and they put my Halloween bucket of candy away . It was like a couple days after Halloween they put it away while I wasn't there . They were helping my kids and they said , oh , I just like cannot have that out or I'll just like keep picking it up .

And I went okay , you know , like that's fine , whatever do what works for you , but it's my house number one . But two is like I can have the candy out there and I can walk by it 20 times without grabbing it . And I don't say that to say , like look at me , I'm so great .

I say it to express that there is a true change that can happen for you where , when you don't restrict that thing or you don't hide it in another room , you actually open up the possibility that you can enjoy that when and if you want it and the lure of it suddenly becomes less appealing . We like stuff we can't have .

It looks more appealing when we can't have it and then when we can have it , it loses its luster a little bit . It doesn't happen overnight and in the intuitive eating approach they teach a lot about how , like you've got to actually almost let yourself go out of control to see that . Like it's possible to do that . That doesn't do anything either .

Like some you know , we teach children to like , learn their own hunger cues by like . Sometimes you eat too much and it doesn't feel good , and because you know that doesn't feel good , you now don't do that same thing again , or in theory , and sometimes we all have to learn those lessons over and over and over again .

But when we restrict , we make things more attractive and that sets us up for that lack of control . By trying to control ourselves with really harsh limitations , we lose our ability to control .

And what I'm trying to get at here is that maybe the point of our eating even eating to reach fitness goals okay , because I'm a person who makes a lot of decisions about my eating and I help my clients make decisions about their eating . That really helps them support their nutrition and aesthetic goals . It also doesn't have to involve a lot of control .

It has to do with planning , preparation , mindfulness and an ability to move on when things don't go exactly as planned . And we can take the science of nutrition and then the science of behavior change , put them together and you can uncover a really , a really sustainable and fulfilling way to eat . So I , in any of these circumstances .

When I'm talking about sort of like relinquishing that control and listening to our body more , I am not suggesting that we can't do things to manipulate the way we eat , to change how we perform or how we look , but we're going to do it in a way that fits into that sort of I think the word I'm looking for is symbiotic system that moment of balancing on the

tightrope on the tricycle , knowing that we got to give a little here to get a little there , and that sometimes I'm passing on a food because I don't want it , and sometimes I'm passing on a food because it doesn't help me reach my goals . And then there are times when the food is offered where it wouldn't help me reach my goals , but it is what I want .

And those , all three of those decisions can coexist if we are able to feel like we are in the driver's seat of our nutrition decisions . And when we fall prey to any of these three reasons that we feel out of control , we are no longer in the driver's seat . So those are just some things to think about .

If you feel out of control and I want you to know that you can achieve these two things at the same time . Simultaneously , you can fuel your body for performance and for fitness goals and for body goals and change as well as still love the food you're eating and not feel out of control in your body . Let me know if this is helpful for you .

If this is something that resonates with you , I'd love to talk about it more and I'd love to hear what you're struggling with in terms of nutrition and be able to help you with that .

If you like the podcast , if you're gaining something from it and you feel like you want to leave a rating or review or a review , that is always so appreciated . I don't always remember to say it , but if you can , that's lovely . If you want to chat , you can send me an email , betsy , at be foster strongcom . That's the letter be foster strongcom .

Or you can send me an Instagram DM . I tend to be on there a lot at foster underscore strength . All right , I want you to go build your strongest body and I'll talk to you next time . Thank you , bye .