Hey, everybody.  So today I wanna talk to you about one of the most confusing things that we do with food that makes no sense to our brain. You know, a lot of us know that when we’re stressed out, we’re going through the downs. When I say the ups and downs of life, we’re going through the downs of life. We totally expect to turn to food. 

One of the reasons that we turn to food is because it’s so darn effective. It really helps us. Manage our emotions, which means keep our stuff together. It really helps us cope. It really helps us not feel the pain when we’re going through hard stuff, and that just makes total sense. I’m not gonna go into all the reasons we do that. Let’s just all agree like that makes a lot of sense.  

What doesn’t make sense is why we eat when good things are happening. Our brain just doesn’t understand. And so today, in this episode, in this video, I want to show you and explain to you why your brain feels so uncomfortable and wants to eat even when good things are happening.

And I’m not talking about in celebration. I’m not talking about intradition. I’m not talking about anything that’s predictable. I’m just saying you got great news or you’re having a really great day, or something that you’ve been waiting for is happening or is finally happened. Something that you’ve been waiting for is finally happening and you expect to feel relief and you do, but then you also want to eat over it.

So let’s break it down into the science. What you need to understand with your brain is that your brain operates on patterns that are familiar. They’re just familiar patterns, but it’s your will then that interprets those patterns or can choose for you.

So let’s just think of your brain as just this organ in your body and the way that it runs, and we’ve talked about the three functions of the brain, but I will review that right now. The three functions of your brain is to keep you safe, to do the easy thing, and to seek pleasure.

And to do the easy thing simply means that your brain is meant to be very efficient. So once it learns a pattern and it’s practiced over and over and over, and over and over, your brain just becomes very efficient at it.

It’s one of the reasons why you don’t have to think to breathe. You don’t have to think for your heart to be. It’s exceptionally helpful in living human life. You don’t have to think about how to brush your teeth. In fact, you just automatically start to do that.

And that’s what I want you to think about your brain. Your brain just automatically does things and until we slow down and notice, oh my gosh, my brain is doing that thing, we don’t even try to change it.

So if there’s no reason to change something, like why would you start brushing your teeth with the opposite hand? Then you wouldn’t ever become aware of what hand am I brushing my teeth with? To create the change.

So I want you to notice two things in what I just said. The first is that your brain is just doing what it’s always been doing, and it will continue to do that, but that’s not inevitable because your will has the power to choose something different by creating a new brain pattern.

And all I just mean by that is, oh, we become aware of it and then we intentionally practice something different. And that intentionally practicing something different takes time. It’s a process. It feels very awkward. It’s a skill, being able to tolerate that awkward feeling. So your brain operates on learned patterns. But you have the opportunity to change it. That’s all I really want you to know.

And for many of us, we’ve spent so many years with stress and disappointment and chronic hyper vigilance, that whole waiting for the other shoe to drop, that expecting the worst. I have a dear family member who always says, well, if I expect the worst, then I’ll always be delighted when something better or less than worse happens.

So when we’re always in that expecting the worst, that is a pattern that your brain begins to not only practice often, but it feels really familiar. It kind of feels comfy. You’re just like, well, this is who I am. So when something good happens, your brain doesn’t think it’s familiar. And in your brain, familiar means safe.

All right, so bad things happening. Being hypervigilant, expecting the shoe to drop feels safe. It feels familiar, good things. Your brain automatically says, this feels unsafe. It feels unpredictable. We don’t know what’s gonna happen here. It feels unfamiliar.

And so because it flags it as unfamiliar, it feels unsafe. Therefore unpredictable. It’s just like when your kids are little and you walk into a room and you see like their room is a mess or that they’ve spilt something.

On one hand, you’re not like as shocked because you kind of predicted that you’ve got like a two and a half year old that you weren’t supervising for, you know, 90 seconds. You expect that, and so it’s not so much of a big deal as if you walked into a room with. A 10-year-old and there was a vase broken.

Nobody like, it’s so funny. People use that example, but who really has vase is broken. But let’s say you were giving them a special snack and you were allowing them to eat in their room, and you came in and it was like a huge mess. They like dump it all over the place. That would feel even more unsafe because you weren’t predicting that.

Okay, so I hope you also understand your brain that safe feels predictable. Your brain is interpreting predictable things as safe and unpredictable things as unsafe, and your body doesn’t feel the same safety that your mind logically knows.

Okay, so what that really means is that on one hand you could tell me all day long why you are so happy that something happened, but your body’s still interpreting it as unsafe. You’re still having a mild or unconscious, let’s say, stress response. You’re still having this like, Ooh, something feels not quite right, ’cause it’s not familiar.

And so that’s why when good things happen or we’re having a good emotion, our brains will trigger anxiety or restlessness. And that anxiety and restlessness, if we’re not aware of it, triggers cravings for food. And when we eat food, we don’t have to feel that. So I hope that makes a lot of sense.

What’s happened also is. Because many women have learned to turn to food for comfort, food has become that regulation tool. It helps you regulate your nervous system. And when our nervous system and your brain senses unpredictability it. It just tries to regulate, return to normal, get back down to baseline, create balance and equilibrium.

And it will use whatever pattern you’ve used in the past, whether it’s smoking, whether it’s going for a walk, whether it is journaling, whether it is a glass of wine, whether it is cleaning, organizing. So when you feel out of balance, your brain will automatically seek balance by doing whatever pattern you have taught it to do. That’s been very effective.

And like I said, if you’re like me, food was always the tool and I was just always so confused. Now I’m glad I do this work because I could tell my younger self, oh, hey, this just feels unpredictable and safe. Because I would eat for any reason. I mean, happy emotions, sad emotions, and I could understand the sad, but I just didn’t understand the happy.

And it is because my brain just thought, oh my gosh, we don’t even know what’s happening. So it turns to food because food is very predictable.

Food is very sensory. Right? It tastes so good. It smells so good. We have such great memories with it and it’s very soothing. I’ve had many clients who say, you know, food is my best friend. It never leaves me. It’s always there.

And part of that is that familiarity, that food is predictable. We know that I-E-A-B-C, I will feel X, Y, z. It just makes so much sense. And so I hope as you listen to this, you just see, oh my gosh, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. There’s no moral failing. Your brain doesn’t know morality. Your will does. Your brain is just an organ that runs on patterns.

And so what eating does is it momentarily? That’s the part that stinks, isn’t it? It’s just so momentarily it overrides the internal chaos that we’re feeling, sort of that imbalance. And floods our brain with dopamine. So we feel that yummy pleasure and serotonin so we feel calm.

And my hope is that the women that I work with start to learn many other tools and create new brain pathways, which you all can, so that we can interrupt this brain pattern and teach our brain a new pattern.

So when the body doesn’t know how to feel peace. Which you will learn in the work that we do, whether it’s in 63 surrendered or a holiday program, celebrate Not sabotage. Or once you just come into the lifetime program, you’ll learn that food is that. You’ll learn that food does not have to be that bridge. Food does not have to be the thing that brings you that temporary regulation.

You’ll learn other ways to regulate yourself. You’ll learn other ways to calm down. You’ll learn other ways to solve for what is causing the problem. You will learn other ways to stabilize yourself. And when we can calm our brains down, that’s when our will is aligned with the Lord, where our will is aligned with the Holy Spirit.

Isn’t that amazing? Because the Lord wants to give us joy. The Lord wants to give us happiness. And if we’re squashing that feeling, we can’t receive it. Now, I hope you didn’t hear me say that you’ve been doing anything wrong ’cause that’s not what I’m saying. I’m just giving you so much hope that the Lord wants you to receive the joy.

The Lord wants you to receive the good things. The Lord is handing them to you and your nervous system and your brain just haven’t been trained and learn the pattern that it’s safe to receive good things. But you can train it.

And so just know if you’ve spent many years being on guard and things have felt unsafe, emotionally, relationships, financially, even spiritually, your brain believes that being on high alert is normal. It feels safe, it feels familiar.

And so when good things show up, it feels unfamiliar, it feels unsafe, it feels unpredictable, and our nervous systems seek familiarity so unconsciously to seek the familiar, that’s what you turn to food. It’s just an old loop, busyness, worry, eating, whatever you turn to. It’s your brain’s way of trying to protect you. Which means I feel out of sorts and I’m just trying to regulate myself. It’s just a protective mechanism.

But this is the moment. This is the moment where once you start to become aware of this, that is the first thing that you’ll do. You’ll just start to notice that you’re becoming, that this is happening. Oh, there’s that protective mechanism. Oh, there’s that. My body isn’t sensing this is safe. Oh, my body thinks that something unpredictable is going to happen.

And this is where we get to notice it and say, there it is again. So what I want you to do is to notice, oh, my brain is sensing, this is unsafe. It’s trying to protect me. And then we’re just going to take a ten second pause. Take a ten second pause and ground yourself first. Where you are in the moment. Just in the moment.

Name one thing that you see. Name one thing that you hear, and one thing that you feel. And when I say feel, I don’t mean like an emotion. I want you to say, oh, I feel my feet on the ground. Oh, I feel the wind in my face. Oh, I feel my hands in my pockets.

And then I want you to decide what does the Lord want me to know right now? What do I want to believe right now? And so some things that may be helpful for you are things like, the Lord is with me. It’s safe. To accept good things. I love that. It’s just safe to receive good things from the Lord. That really calms my nervous system a lot. I have a hard time receiving good things.

This is just becoming into my consciousness that I have a hard time with that. So when I say it’s safe to receive something good, I can feel my grip loosening because if we’re gripping. If we’re gripping to control, which is what happens when we’re hypervigilant, right? We want to grip to feeling control of something.

We want to grip to feeling stabilized, we can just open our hands. So in that ten second pause, notice what your brain is doing, trying to protect you, trying to keep you safe. My brain thinks that receiving this isn’t safe. Ground yourself in the moment. Name something that you see, something that you hear, and something that you feel tactilely if I said that correctly.

And then you just decide what you want to believe. What do you want to believe the Lord is giving you? What do you want to believe is happening right now? And you get to create that safety in your body.

And it’s gonna feel uncomfortable at first, but by interrupting that pattern, you are interrupting the pattern that knows good things are unsafe and scary, and we better go eat. So that starts to become weaker, and the stronger pattern is it’s safe to receive good things.

So we’re creating safety in our brain. We’re creating safety in our body. And therefore our hands will be open and we can receive the good things. We can receive the good feelings in our soul. They won’t feel so unpredictable.

And so my friends, just notice you’re doing nothing wrong. You’re doing absolutely nothing wrong. This is just the way your brain pattern has been conditioned. And so I hope this helps you answer the question, why do I eat when good things happen? It just doesn’t make sense.

Well, I hope now it makes sense to you, and I hope now you also have some tools that will help you retrain your brain to feel safe with good things. And one of the best ways that you can retrain your brain is to have support and to have support so that you’re not out there on your own. Trying to do this.

So I want you to go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. See what programs we have going on right now. Just go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Maybe we have one of our upcoming challenges that you can get in and that way you know that you can start to practice these things.

And this will just be one of the many things that you see yourself overeating over that you just won’t do anymore because you’ll be surrounded by other Catholic women to help you retrain your brain. So it’s the Holy Spirit guiding your decisions and not your scared brain.

Alright, everybody, have a blessed day.