Any woman who has attempted to reach and maintain a healthy and natural weight knows a thing or two about cravings. They call out to you like the handsome, barely legal neighbor’s kid that you know you shouldn’t flirt with but…I mean, at least your intentions are good.
Whether you’re in a program at a weight loss clinic or working on developing healthy habits with your tribe, food urges are going to happen. You know this. But here’s something you may not realize.
When cravings strike, you don’t have to ride the struggle bus.
Resistance to food urges is absolutely futile. In fact, there is only one way to navigate a food urge for long-term success. And no, it’s not to slink behind that silk dress in your closet and scarf down a ho-ho.
When food urges and cravings raise their very insistent selves to the front of your mind, you have three choices. You can:
- Resist it,
- Avoid it, or
- Allow it.
Yes, #3 is supposed to be there, and in a moment you’ll understand why.
If you want to set yourself up for long-term weight loss success, the only way to go is to allow yourself to feel the urge, process it, and move on. This is admittedly not as easy as simply giving in and submitting to temptation, but you’ll feel a hell of a lot better for it and you will be improving your life in other ways at the same time.
Let me explain.
It’s Perfectly Fine to Feel Bad Sometimes
Many of us operate under the misconception that the only feelings we should embrace are those that are good. However, we don’t live in a sparkly “my little pony” universe, and that’s a good thing. I promise…and not just because the singing would get on your nerves after a while.
The truth is that humans experience a vast array of emotions and quite a few of them are not positive. And guess what? That is not only perfectly fine, it’s also normal and natural.
Not only does feeling the bad parts of life help us more fully enjoy the good stuff, feeling all of the feelings leads to better emotional regulation overall.
When we practice processing all of our emotions, even the scary, frustrating, sad, and angry ones, we improve our emotional intelligence and we gain confidence. When we have the courage to feel everything, we can face our urges.
It also means we get a nice clear look at what’s no longer working for us in our lives so we can, you know, fix them.
Let’s look at how this relates to weight loss specifically.
Emotional Regulation and Weight Loss
Practicing emotional regulation (in other words, processing our emotions) helps us stay present and ride out urges and cravings in real time. It takes time, effort, and intention to do this. And you won’t be perfect at it every moment of every day. That’s why it’s called a practice.
It’s like this. Urges are nothing more than thoughts. They are super intense, insistent, nagging in your face thoughts, but they are thoughts nonetheless. Trickiest of all is that they are subconscious at first.
That’s why they seem to come out of nowhere. They exist as part of an unconscious loop circulating our brains and making themselves known at any time they please. An urge comes up and it feels urgent, in fact it can even feel like it’s life or death (even when consciously we know that it’s not).
We are conditioned to act on this so we do. Often in the form of overeating or eating things that make us feel bad, physically and emotionally.
To deal with this, you have to pull these urges out of the background and make them explicit. How? So glad you asked. It’s all about allowing them to happen, not resisting or avoiding them.
Allowing and Processing Urges
In the early stages of dealing with food urges, your number one goal is to break the subconscious cycle and bring those urges out into the light of day. When you shine light on scary things, they become clearer. You can see them for what they really are, just normal human emotions. In doing so, you learn how to process them.
Start by making a long list of urges that you are going to expressly allow yourself to feel. It’s like giving yourself permission to feel them and deal with them. You don’t have to make the list all at once. You can start with a big brainstorming session of urges you feel frequently and know are going to come up. Then you can add to the list when new and unexpected ones pop into view. Keep adding to the list. It can be as long as 100 urges.
Armed with your long list of Allowed Urges, you will be ready to explore them further and figure out what to do with them when they show up. This is the processing side of things.
Ask yourself a few questions about each of your Allowed Urges.
- What did it feel like?
- What thoughts did you have during the urge?
- How did you manage it?
From there, it’s time to flip the script on the urge. Instead of going into autodrive, you are going to process the urge and move on with your day, your life, and your commitment to losing weight. Ask yourself a different set of questions:
- What would it feel like to let this urge just happen?
- How would my thoughts change during the urge?
- How would your feelings change?
- How would your results change?
- Is there a skill you need to develop to manage this feeling?
Here’s the thing. This is hard work, but it is life changing and will impact every part of your life in positive and meaningful ways. But you do not have to do this alone. When you are ready to change your feelings about food, lose weight, and live life on purpose, we are here to help you.
Exclusive Health Coaching in Denver
Whole Woman Health is the top health clinic for women in Denver and we are here to help you get back to your healthiest self.
Other weight loss programs in Denver fail to focus on the foundational aspects that get you feeling better without fad diets. It all starts with you and the relationship you have with your mind and body.
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