#142: Weight Loss and Addicted to Food

142. Weight Loss and Addicted to Food

Are you worried that no matter what you do, you’re always going to be addicted to food and you will never be able to change? Well, don’t worry. I got you. Today we’re actually going to do a diagnosis to see if you are addicted to food and to know what to do with it. My name is Dara Tomasson and this is Love Yourself Thin podcast episode 142, weight loss and addicted to food.

Okay. So I got this quiz recently online because you know, there’s so many amazing things online and it’s from foodaddicts. org. And it was, it’s 20 questions. We’re going to go over them. I’m going to read them with you. We’re going to work through them. And then I’m going to give you some suggestions on the first steps that you can take that doesn’t feel so overwhelming and hard. But before we dive into that, I want to share what happens with women and the people around them when they do this work. Okay. So I have a client who has a very eclectic eye. She’s really good at collecting things. She’s very artistic. She’s super, super curious. She loves taking classes and it’s super fun for her. But she has a lot of things and in order to keep the peace in her relationship, she rented a storage locker, but it’s kind of expensive and she feels a lot of guilt and shame and she feels like it’s really sucking a lot of her like money energy and her mental energy. And so she decided that she was going to start cleaning out the locker. And so I’ve been helping her with doing that. And the ripple effect of this is that there are a lot of really happy people who are receiving her generous donations. She’s also going to be able to do so much more. And in fact, we talked about her donating to a lot of the resources to an organization and she’s able to pay for the shipping of it and all of that because she has this extra money that she is now saving. And so not only does she benefit, but there are so many people who will benefit from her super fun art supplies and resources. And then also she has the benefit with her spouse who now she has less stress and anxiety and discomfort around him. Because she has really taken the bull by the horns and worked through all this. And it’s been also really helpful for her because she is seeing how when she collects these things and doesn’t use them, what a heavy weight it is. And she can see how that relates to her own weight loss. And she has so much more compassion for herself and for members in the membership because she sees the role that food has been playing. So so many wins there. So happy for her.

All right, well, let’s go into this quiz. Now what I want you to do is I have the worksheet, so I have it here. You can use that one, or you can just write 1 to 20 on a piece of paper old school and we’re gonna look at the scores. So what I want you to do is one is no, not at all, this is not me. Three is neutral like yeah it kind of is me, kind of not and then five is that’s totally me. Whereas two is like kind of but not very often and four is yeah quite a bit, but not every single time So have you ever wanted to stop eating and found you just couldn’t? So, if that’s not you at all, that’s a one. If that’s you, that’s five, that happens on a regular basis, then that would be a five for you. If it’s like, kind of yes, kind of not, that’s a three. Number two, do you constantly think about food or your weight? I know for myself, I spent a lot of time. It’s such a distraction. Number three, do you find yourself attempting one diet or food plan after another with no lasting success? Number four, do you binge and then get rid of the binge through vomiting, exercise, laxatives or other forms of purging? Number five, do you eat differently in private than you do in front of other people?

Number six, has a doctor or a family member ever approached you with concern about your eating habits or weight? Number seven, do you eat large quantities of food at one time? So you’re binging? Number eight, is your weight problem due to your nibbling all day long? Number nine, do you eat to escape from your feelings? Number 10, do you eat when you’re not hungry? 11, have you ever discarded food only to retrieve it and eat it later? Number 12, do you eat in secret? Number 13, do you fast or severely restrict your food intake? 14, have you ever stolen other people’s food? 15, have you ever hidden food to make sure you will have enough? 16. Do you feel driven to exercise excessively to control your weight? 17. Do you obsessively calculate the calories you’ve burned against the calories you’ve eaten? 19. Do you frequently feel guilty or ashamed about what you’ve eaten? 19. Are you waiting for your life to begin when you lose the weight? And 20. Do you feel hopeless about your relationship with food?

Okay. So clearly, the higher the number, the more you are addicted. Okay, so it’s keeping it simple. Now, what I want to do is I want to talk to you about your relationship with food. How did you start having these kinds of unhealthy practices around food? So, when you look at these questions, and I love the, I love this concept of compassionate honesty. So where do you think you learned this? I have a friend who, her father was extremely overweight, and it’s sad because I was actually just talking to my husband about this He watched this reel about these influencers who are extremely overweight and they die at a young age. I have a friend whose husband very overweight obese, like extreme obesity, and he died at a young age. So it’s really hard because you know, and not gonna lie to you, there’s times where I worry about people coming on my Instagram and accusing me of fat shaming them. And I never want anyone to feel ashamed about their weight. I want them to start getting understanding and insight and direction because it doesn’t feel good when you feel out of control.

And so there are repercussions of the ways that you’re thinking about food. And if you don’t take care of it, then you have those repercussions of course, then you don’t live as long. You don’t have the same opportunities in life because you aren’t able to do things. You simply can’t. You can’t go kayaking. You can’t go hiking. You can’t do all the things that you want to do because when you are carrying all that extra weight, it’s impossible for you to do that. And so I want to just be just straightforward about it and say like, this is the reality. When you choose to eat this way, you are choosing to have these as your consequence. And the, the problem is if we’re worried about fat shaming and if we’re worried about these kinds of conversations, then you’re not able to get the kind of traction, the kind of help and support that you need because you’re, what are you doing? You’re staying in shame and that feels terrible.

So, I like these questions. I like that we can go there and start talking about what your relationship with food is and then start getting curious about why. And the more that you can answer the why, the more insight you can have. So I will link the resource here that I have about food addict. If you have a few of these that are higher and if this is like a really big problem, then definitely go and get professional help. There is a difference between like something that a life coach is qualified to help you with versus a trained medical professional. So I want to just be straightforward on that, but my goal for you on this podcast is to give you some insight to say, Hey, have you thought that this could be a possibility? Have you thought that this could be a problem that you have? And then when we shine the light on it, then you can go and you can get the help that you need.

So I’m going to give you three suggestions or three ways of helping. So, and this is why. I feel like having a life coach to help you with your relationship with food is one of the best news ever. So I’m going to give you three suggestions if you are having a dependency on food that you don’t want to have. The first one is, and this is actually from the Al -Anon, so Al Anon method is the first one it’s an acronym, HOW so being honest and then being open and then being willing to try. So, when you have an addiction to something, there’s lots of reasons. Like you’re trying to avoid the situation. You’re trying to make yourself feel a different emotion. You’re trying to block certain emotions. You’re not giving yourself that healthy balance of being a human. And When you can finally just be honest with yourself, that’s the first step. The second one is being open. And then the third is being willing to try. And that is one of the best things that I, as a coach, that I can do is I can help you with that willing to try. I can help you with the mind tools to look at the situation in a different way. Because when we can actually give ourselves a framework and looking in our brain of why we’re doing what we’re doing, and we can become neutral, or we can have these different tools, then weight loss doesn’t feel so heavy. It doesn’t feel so impossible. It doesn’t feel so hard. It actually feels doable. And the other thing that I want to offer to you is that when you have a coach, and especially when you have a group of women that are all doing the same thing, you no longer are having what’s called shame. You don’t have that shame that’s being attached to it all. You’re able to look at, Oh, I’m actually not broken. Oh, I can change. It’s not just me.

Today I had this great call and the lady on the call, she said one of her biggest fears is that she will, she will fail. And I said, okay, what does failure look like? She said, well, failure would be that I don’t come to any more calls and that I gained 50 pounds in two years. And I’m like, okay, so what I want you to do right now is I want you to write yourself a fail plan. And she looked at me and I said, yeah, so we’re going to write it down and say, if I don’t come to a call in three weeks, I’m going to do this. I’m going to reach out to somebody or I’m going to have, I’m going to have someone right now who says, I’m keeping my eye out on this lady. And if they don’t come, then I’ll reach out to them. And so she has a fail plan. And then she, then she was worried about, she said, I always get triggered when I get past 200, that’s a real trigger for me. I was like, okay. So now we write a fail plan. So when I’m between 195 to 205 pounds, this is what I’m going to do. I said, and write it down and maybe you could even just put it right by the scale and say, okay, I know you body. I know you brain. So when you feel scared when you’re in this, this zone of weight loss, you start doubting yourself and you start sabotaging yourself. Well, we’re gonna, we’re going to work on not doing that.

Isn’t that fascinating? So that’s what I would recommend for you. So take the quiz, like be able to look at the honest, open, and willing to try. And then I would definitely say write a fail plan. I will have further episodes on fail plans because they’re just so helpful. But I think that just right now, this podcast alone, go and do the questions, look at your relationship with food. I have an amazing course It’s called breaking up with food. It’s been so insightful. And I love doing these masterclasses for, it’s kind of like a sample at Costco. People who haven’t joined my program yet, they get to kind of see, but it’s always amazing to me how many women in my program attend because they’re always learning and they just love it. So if you are ready to take the dive and change your relationship with food. break that relationship the doors are always open and I can’t wait to meet you. I can’t wait to welcome you and watch your own transformation and help you with that. All right. Take care. Bye.