So it has a pretty significant pool or control in your life, let’s say. Now it is also a cast food if it triggers you to either: A eat more of that food or B eat more food in general. For example, I had a client who was into diet Coke. Now diet Coke for her was a trigger food because she would find once she had a diet Coke, it wouldn’t lead her to drink a lot more diet Coke, but it would trigger her to eat lots of sugary foods to the point that she was binging on them. And so I would say that diet Coke was a trigger and chaos food for her. The other way, you’ll know if you have chaos food is because although you plan a certain amount that you would feel good about, you often are unable to stick to that amount and you find that you eat more. So for example, you might say I’m going to have one piece of cake. And after you have one piece of cake, you find that you can’t just have one piece of cake that you have two or three pieces of cake. Now, I had a client who planned during Thanksgiving a pumpkin pie, a piece of pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. Well, then she also planned a piece of pumpkin pie for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the next day, until the pie was gone. 

Now was that chaos food? Did it control her? Did it consume her? Well, she would decide, oh, do I want to do that again? And I’ll tell you why she decided that she did not want to do that again. She just did not feel good about having three pieces of pie in one day. Although she planned it and you can experiment with that. And sometimes you don’t know what chaos food is until you plan it. And then you realize, gosh, that just doesn’t make me feel so great having it in that amount. So how in the world do you find yours? Well, probably just hearing my description of what chaos food is. You probably already have some foods that come to mind and you’re really scared to admit that those foods came to your mind, so that’s fine. You can be just totally free to be honest, that you thought of certain foods and you are thinking, is that a chaos food? There’s no pressure to do anything with that other than get curious and know that foods came to your mind when you heard that description. The second thing that you can do, is to make a list of foods that come to your mind that fit the description above. And those are foods that you crave. 

You’re thinking about when you’re not eating them. They trigger you to more food that you have binged on in the past, That you think about and that you usually cannot stick to a planned amount. So you could make a list of those foods and then you can make a list of foods that you’ve never had a problem with. That you can take her leave, that you can feel satisfied and move on to. And then your middle list in the middle, it’d be like, I’m not so sure they’re kind of confusing foods. So I like to call them chaos foods, which you just heard on that list. Then the list that you don’t have any problems with, I would call those calm foods but that middle list is confusing, isn’t it? We’re just not sure and again, we’re just growing in awareness. So then the next thing is, what do you do when you have this list? And it has come to your awareness that, oh, this is potentially, or for sure chaos food in my life. You can just be aware of it and just know that that food tends to cause you chaos. Just be curious and be aware, knowing that if I put this food on my plan, the potential for it to cause chaos is greater than a column of food. 

The second thing is that you can test it out. I had a client who knew that pizza was a chaos food for her, but she was not willing to not put it on her plan, she still wanted to put it on her plan. And so she just continued to test it out where she would say, oh, I’m going to have four or five pieces of square cut, I’m in the Chicago land area where they do a lot of square cut pizzas, and so she would test that out and I believe it took two times for her to test it out and to see that she just continued to eat more than what she planned. And then she decided to remove pizza from her life temporarily. That is the third thing that you can do is you can remove your chaos food from your life for a set period of time. Maybe you remove it from your life for two weeks, a month, three months and you get to see, during that time you become a detective, see if your life feels easier, if it feels calmer. See if it’s easier to stick to your plan, if you find that you’re often thrown off on your plan by a specific food well, what if we take that food off? 

Is it easier to stick to my plan? You can also notice if your food thoughts become quieter, the food drama, because you’re no longer thinking about that food because it’s just not part of your plan. And I’ll tell you, it will probably take 48 to 72 hours for you to see an effect, because until then you may continue to want to grip onto that food. But once you get 48 to 72 hours removed from that food, you will start to feel that calm and peace of having that chaos food removed from your life. Again, there’s no pressure to do that; this is another experiment that you can try but being aware of what your chaos foods are and your calm foods helps you to be able to have peace with your food and really learn the very first step of lasting weight loss. And the very first step of lasting weight loss is separating your food choices from your emotions and part of separating your food choices from your emotions is creating what’s called an easy to stick to meal plan. 

Which is a plan that you create, it’s easy to stick to. I know I have a podcast somewhere about it, but the cliff notes version is this: At the beginning of the day, you make a plan. What do I want to eat for breakfast? And then you ask yourself, is that easy to stick to? If not, what needs to be changed? And you make changes and you do that for each meal and snack? Ask yourself, is this easy to stick to? If not, you make changes. Our two food rules are that you eat food you love and that you feel good about. We do not plan foods on your easy to stick to meal plan that are should foods. I should eat this, I should eat that, and we also don’t plan foods that lead to weight loss. I’m going to eat this because it’ll lead to weight loss. The reason why is because I see women over and over not being able to follow their plan when they do that. And why can you not follow your plan? Because at the end of the day, if you have created a restrictive plan that isn’t enjoyable and you get to the end of the day and you have not followed that plan. You will have a slew of justifiable reasons for why you didn’t follow that plan, it felt too restrictive. I didn’t really want to eat that. It wasn’t enough. I was hungry all Bob, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you’ll go on to all these reasons and your brain will still be believing that the reason you’re not losing weight is because of the food.  

But if you create what’s called an easy to stick to meal plan, which is a plan of food that you enjoy in the amounts that are enough for you, that you feel good about food that you really want to eat, and at the end of the day you don’t stick to that plan. Then you have been given some great information about what is holding up your weight loss? And what I mean by that is you might find, oh, I’ll play it over eight at dinner because I was really stressed out. Great! Let’s start addressing this dinner issue. What’s going on at family dinner that feels stressful? How can we make this easier? You might say, oh, I didn’t stick to my lunch because they brought lunch to my work. Great! Well, let’s talk about what we’re going to do, Plan B. So that if that happens again, that you can feel good about that, let’s just come up with a protocol. And so it just helps us start to really identify the situations that need some attention where you might need more support, where you might need a protocol where you’re feeling vulnerable or stressed, let’s address those things. And by creating an easy to stick to meal plan, we remove one of the stresses from your life. We make your food easy so that we can deal with the other things in your life.  

Because the first step leading to lasting weight loss is being able to separate your emotions from your food choices and teaching you how to get through the ups and downs of life without stress eating. And I know this podcast has been really helpful for teaching you what your chaos foods are, but this is just one element of the weight loss with the holy spirit way of eating and living. And I want you to know all of the areas so that you have lasting weight loss for the rest of your life. And we are offering right now two months in our program for the price of one where you can learn all the tips and tricks and this way of eating that is simple and peaceful. And our challenge starts today. July one Isn’t that amazing, not only does our challenge start today, but you also are getting two months for the price of one that’s $59. So, I encourage you to hop over to weightlosswiththeholyspirit.com. Get started in our 30 day challenge so that you can be supported by hundreds of other Catholic women, who are learning this way of life and losing weight in a simple and peaceful manner. It’s so fantastic! You have no idea what you’ve been missing. Don’t wait another day, join us now. 

Have a blessed day.