So let’s discuss these and again, I want to make the point that it’s not about the specific food. It’s about the feeling that you’re having when you’re eating the food. First, let’s talk about how the human brain works and why eating these two types of food leads you to regret. So your brain is always trying to keep you safe and you imagine that you have a part of your brain on the very back part, that is the watchdog and that watchdog is always looking out for danger, always looking out for danger. And when it senses that there’s a threat or danger, it starts barking, bark, bark,  bark, bark, bark. And do you guys know the easiest way to calm a barking dog? Yeah. Throw it a bone and that’s one of the reasons when we’re feeling pressure and stress. That we will eat food under pressure or impulse because our brain is sensing that there is danger or a threat, obviously we’re not in physical danger but there are dangers that you are experiencing.  I’ll use an example of summer summer socializing in just a moment.

Now the other part of your brain is on the front part of your brain, that’s the wise owl that’s a prefrontal cortex and that part of your brain is responsible for long-term consequences. Remembering what it is that you really want, problem-solving, thinking logically, being calm. That’s the part of the brain that gets you, what you really want, that gets you. What’s really important to you, not just what feels good at the moment. But when that dog is barking and it senses there’s a threat bark, bark, bark, bark, bark; what happens to the wise owl? It flies away and so we are in a stress response when the dog is barking and the only thing that we can do at that point is to calm ourselves down, to calm that barking dog so that the wise owl returns and we can think logically. So let’s use the example of a summer barbecue, so you might be at a summer barbecue and it’s fine, but now you’re getting a little bored. Maybe you’re having the same anxiety.  

And one of the things that we do when we’re bored or having anxiety, which is this negative feeling, and you start to have maybe even a low level stress response. We were like, I want to get out of here, you’re experiencing some feelings that you don’t enjoy. One of the things that we do is what’s called buffering and buffering is where you put distance between yourself and an uncomfortable feeling by doing something that’s sort of like escaping, maybe it’s scrolling on your phone, but in this case it’s typically impulse eating or just eating to buffer. To buffer, feeling bored, anxious, annoyed food is going in our mouth impulsively, just to not feel uncomfortable feelings. I like to imagine sitting at a summer barbecue, kind of by yourself, bored and there’s checks mixed on the table and you just start eating mindlessly. So what do you do with that? Well, once you notice that you’re eating impulsively, eating food you didn’t plan eating foods that maybe you don’t even really want to have, but you notice that you’re doing it impulsively. The only thing you can do is to calm yourself down; is to recognize whoa, I’m doing this to detect that you’re doing it, breathe, calm yourself down for some reason, your dog is barking. It’s sensing a threat, even though it might not be a huge stress response; there is a stress response going on in your buffering. 

Calm yourself down so your wise owl can return and you can start thinking with your wise owl, and then you just decide, do I want to keep eating this check’s mix? Do I want to have another brownie? Do I want another scoop of ice cream? Do I really want to finish the rest of this third hot dog? Is it really that good? Do I want this? And you can just decide now, you can decide whatever you want. Like I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what you choose to eat. I just want you to love your reasons. So that’s impulse foods and that’s how you handle impulse food. It detects when you’re eating impulsively, calm yourself down and just decide do I want to keep beating this? 

Now social pressure, as you go into the summer, you will likely experience social pressure. And I just want to tell you, social pressure is a hundred percent normal. We usually feel social pressure because there’s a primitive part of our brain that just wants to fit in and you guys know this since you’ve been in junior high or since you’ve been six years old, we want to fit in with what we where we want to fit in with the way that we talk, our hairstyles, maybe even what books we’re reading, or listening to. We just want to fit in to be part of the gang and primitively when we were part of the tribe, we were taking care of people like this. They made sure that we survived and so there’s a piece of our human brain that just wants to fit in on a very primitive level. And it comes out in a variety of ways, but especially socially and for emotional eaters, it comes out in our food. So just know it is entirely normal to feel social pressure because your dog is barking with the threat that it’s detecting of not fitting in. 

This is when your brain starts to offer you thoughts like everybody else’s doing it, I’m the only one, I’ll be left out, I don’t want to make that person feel bad. Okay? So what do you do when you feel social pressure and you notice that dog is barking and you start to feel pressure. The first thing is to detect that feeling. And maybe over the summer, all you do this summer is to detect when you’re feeling that feeling, there’s so much power when you can at least tune into your feelings. So first you detect that feeling of pressure and your dog is barking my friends, when you feel pressure, what do you do? All you can do is calm yourself down. And the way you calm yourself down is to just breathe, whew, I’m feeling a lot of pressure here. Ooh, I don’t want to hurt their feelings. And maybe you excuse yourself and go to the restroom and what do we do after we calm down? We now have the ability to access our prefrontal cortex, our wise owl, and we get to decide, do I really want to keep eating this too? I really want to eat this. What do I want? 

I remember last summer I was working with a client and she had three neighborhood parties over the 4th of July weekend and we were just deciding how she wanted to handle each party.  At one of the parties she was really concerned about this neighbor that was a wine pusher. So we discussed how she wanted to handle the wind pusher and in our community, we planned ahead for parties. We plan ahead for things that we expect to encounter. We plan ahead for quote, food pushers. And you guys let’s just talk about food pushers right now. You see them at holidays, you see them at parties. You can see them anytime, but the truth is, a food pusher is just a human being who’s either telling you something like, oh my gosh, you have to have the brownies. So that’s a sentence and they’re telling you something, or they’re asking you a question, have you had the brownies? I made them for you. So they’re using words to express something and they’re just asking you a question and we can make it mean so much like, oh, I’m going to offend them, I’m going to hurt their feelings. And that might be true but it wouldn’t remind you that number one, your job on this earth is to take care of you. And I know that you can tactfully say, oh no, thank you. We’re oh, well, think about that, oh, those two look good. There are simple ways to not put food in your mouth that you don’t want to put in your mouth.  

And I’m not saying don’t eat them. What I’m saying is detect when you’re feeling pressure, calm down. Breathe and then decide what you want to do and if you decide to eat the brownies that someone made for you, tell yourself the truth. Number one, I’m too uncomfortable to say no, I would rather eat this brownie and have whatever feelings I’m going to have about that. Then to feel uncomfortable saying no, thank you or you might say, I can eat this and not regret this. You just get to decide, but you’re not going to eat the brownie out of a place of pressure. It will be after you’ve calmed down and you have decided. I hope you guys see that the simple formula is this, detect when you’re feeling a little unsettled. Feeling impulsive, feeling something negative, feeling pressure and you want to eat food that you hadn’t planned. Calm yourself down first and if you then choose to eat that food, that’s not a problem. But from that calm place, the food is no longer an impulse food or a pressure food and therefore it doesn’t have that same effect on your weight loss progress.  

You’re coming from a place of feeling more in control, than being controlled. I’m going to say that again, you’re coming from a place of feeling in control, rather than feeling controlled. And that feels so good. That builds that self-control muscle that builds your confidence, that you can start going into situations and not feeling a victim of circumstances where you go in recognizing that you were the one that gets to choose what goes in your mouth. You’re the one that gets to choose what’s best for you and you can start to become that woman that you can count on, that you can grow and trust with yourself no matter what situation that you’re in. Because you are choosing what you really want. Another thing I like is to just tell ourselves the truth. It is that I’m choosing to have this, not, I have to have it not, oh, I never get it, not believing food lies. So here’s what happens. What is a food lie? A food lie is when you get into a circumstance and you start rationalizing why you’re eating food that you hadn’t planned to eat. I never get it, it’s a special occasion.  

That can happen a lot with restaurants and restaurants used to be for special occasions, you guys, but in our culture today, we like to go out to eat any time. And then I also love that I never get this, really? Because the majority of people who are listening to this live in a place where you can either purchase or make whatever you want at any time of day. And so you’ll get these different food lies. I’ll offend them. If I don’t eat this,  which may very well be true, but you get to decide if that’s what you want to focus on. You’ll start to see what the food lies are that come up for you? And you can just tell yourself the truth, I am choosing to have this, but not because I have to, and not because other people are eating it. And not because I never get it because none of that is true. And no matter what you eat, just love your reasons. Now, one of the things that I do suggest that really helps is going into parties and socializing with a plan, no matter how loose or structured. And you probably don’t really know how to make a plan, but I will be going over this  for all of the summer parties, all of the summer socializing, in my free workshop, summer slimmed down. 

And in this workshop, you will learn how to not only lose weight in the summer treats that you want. How to not let those social events or vacations sabotage your weight loss and how to not give up under social pressure. It’s totally normal, but how do you choose you under social pressure? And how did I not give up halfway through the summer? Often women who use the secrets, I’m going to be teaching you, especially on how to plan. Returned from their vacation, having a great time and losing weight. When was the last time you lost weight on vacation?  They go on girls’ trips, feeling stellar about their food choices. That’s an exact quote from a woman who said, it would be on my girls’ weekend and I feel stellar about my food choices.  And most of all they don’t give up. So I want you to learn how to navigate this summer, having a great time making big progress on your weight loss goals and not giving up. This is the summer that you can have a bunch of fun and make sure you meet your weight loss goals. So go to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com and get your spot in that free workshop “Summer slim down”. 

All right, everybody have a blessed day.