9 Non-Food Rewards for Challenging Days

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Related Episodes:

• Rewarding Yourself
• Is Food a Reward
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Full Episode Transcript:

9 Non-Food Rewards for Challenging Days

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life Podcast.

If you’re listening in and you enjoy watching, you can now watch me on YouTube. I like to think that I’m talking one-on-one with you when I’m doing these episodes, so I think the video really helps you to feel like I am talking directly to you.

Alright, let’s dive into the topic of non-food rewards for challenging days. At the end of the episode, I’ll tell you about a new free course I have that’s coming out very soon.

The reason why I wanted to cover non-food rewards for challenging days is because using food as a reward for either a challenging day or an accomplishment is a very common eating habit in career women and really in any person.

I used to use food and also wine as a reward for a challenging day at work when I was a physician assistant. Even just the anticipation of what I was going to eat and the glass of wine I was going to have later that evening, was a reward.

I got a little dopamine hit from that, which makes complete sense because dopamine is released with the anticipation of a reward and again with the reward itself. So, when you actually eat the food. Or get whatever reward it is.

Why this can turn into a habit is because of that dopamine release. Dopamine makes your body feel good. It provides pleasure, temporary pleasure.

When your brain associates the food reward with pleasure, it wants to repeat that. And it remembers it for the future.

So, let’s just say you’re using food as a reward for a challenging day and you get that dopamine hit from the anticipation of the reward and also the reward itself.

Your brain remembers that pleasure that you got and then if you have a challenging day the next day, guess what you’re more likely to do?

Go to that food reward again. This then strengthens that link between the food and the dopamine hit being very pleasurable and rewarding, so then it makes it even more likely that the next time you have a challenging day you will use food as a reward.

You can see how this cycle would get strengthened the more you do it and the more you do it it ends up becoming a habit. Especially if it’s a specific circumstance that feels challenging such as dealing with a specific person at work, or a specific work task. Or maybe a standing meeting that you always find to be very challenging that occurs either every day or every week.

So you then form the sequence of events that strengthens and turns into habit cycle. For example, let’s just say that there is a standing meeting that occurs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon at work. This particular meeting always leaves you feeling some sort of negative emotion.

You were planning on cooking dinner when you got home, but after you got out of work, the pizza and garlic knots sounded like such a treat for that difficult meeting that you just got through on Monday.

You get pleasure from anticipating the garlic knots and the pizza, and then you get even more pleasure from the dopamine that’s released when you eat the pizza and the garlic knots when you get home.

Then on Wednesday, you get out of that meeting and you remember that rewarding yourself after that challenging meeting provided some pleasure, so hey, why not do it again.

And then maybe on Friday, before the meeting even occurs, you think “oh to get me through this meeting on a Friday afternoon, I’m gonna plan on having a big bowl of ice cream tonight.”

So, at this point you’re now anticipating the reward even more and planning ahead for it. You’re thinking it’ll help you get through the meeting and so then thinking about that reward later on helps make the meeting more tolerable to you.

Or like I said, it can be a challenging person or people. It can be a challenging work task. It can be something challenging at home and does not necessarily have to be something work related.

So, what exactly is the problem with this? The problem is that if you are trying to change your eating habits or you’re trying to lose some weight or you’re trying to get a little healthier, the foods that you typically choose for rewards are not going to help you do that.

Because most people are not choosing a salad to reward themselves after a challenging day.

And why would you? I mean I love salad, but I have salad pretty much every day for lunch, so I wouldn’t say that it’s a treat or a reward. For me, a reward would be something like homemade peanut butter cookies.

Or, when I was oftentimes using food as a reward, it was a big bowl of pretzels, or something else carby, and a big glass of red wine.

So, your reasoning brain, the prefrontal cortex, should be in the driver seat when it comes to choosing the foods you eat (as often as possible at least), rather than the habit brain.

The habit brain is going to go for instant gratification and quick and easy. It’s also going to go for the things like sugar, salt, and fat.

And when it comes to breaking “bad” eating habits or losing weight, you want to be using your reasoning brain, the prefrontal cortex, because this part of the brain has your future goals and well-being in mind.

Okay, so with one-on-one coaching, I help my clients break bad eating habits, create new healthy eating habits, and also lose weight. And breaking a habit of using food as reward is one of those eating habits.

I’d love to help you with the eating habits you’ve been struggling with, so if you’re curious about how exactly I can help you, we can talk during a free consult. You can book that right on my website katemjohnston.com.

Now, what are the benefits of using non food rewards for a challenging day? Well, many of the ones that I’m going to give you are healthy non food rewards. They will improve either your overall physical health, mental health or emotional health.

And because you’ll be doing more of those and less of the food rewards, you will start to break the habit of those food rewards and reap the benefits of that.

That may include an easier time with weight loss period it might include just feeling more in control of what you’re eating. It might include feeling more energized if you found that your food rewards were high in refined sugars or carbohydrates.

Your physical health will most likely improve. And even your health will improve, because if you’re feeling guilt or shame or disappointment in yourself after you eat the foods that you no taste really good in the moment, but you no are interfering with your health or body goals, then it’ll significantly decrease those negative feelings. And any negative self talk.

Alright, so let’s jump into some of these non food rewards for a challenging day. And this is not a comprehensive list. These are just some ideas for you, and they’re in no particular order.

Number one is reading time. And I don’t mean something that you feel like you have to read for work period I mean something that you are looking forward to reading. Remember how you get that spike in dopamine with the anticipation of something. So, make sure to have a book at home that you’re looking forward to reading.

Make sure you have a cozy blanket and if you enjoy a cup of hot relaxing tea, then do it up. If you can think about how nice this will feel during your challenging day, it’ll help to increase the anticipation of this when you get home

Alright, number two is spending time outside. Being out in nature or even just being outside in the city if you’re in a city, provides such a boost in mood.

So, rewarding yourself with a walk, or even just sitting outside in a chair and enjoying the sunshine, the sounds of nature, the sounds of horns honking in the city, whatever it is, can be very fulfilling. It can also let you just be alone with your thoughts.

Or you can go for a walk with someone or with your dog. It could be a really good time to connect with a friend or a significant other or even your kid.

Alright #3 is social connection. You can decide ahead of time that you’re going to call someone that you haven’t talked to in a while. Or maybe even FaceTime. Or join up to do something together after work or after your challenging day.

The anticipation of talking to, connecting with, or seeing this person is such a good reward, and then of course actually being with this person will be so rewarding. And even just think about afterwards where you feel like you had such a nice time it was good to catch up, that feeling afterward can be very rewarding.

#4 is having an Accomplishments Journal. This is a journal where you can write down your accomplishments. So what I recommend for this is that you sit down one night or morning, and start writing down all of your accomplishments. I mean anything that comes to your mind.

It may take a few days of sitting down and doing this to really get all of them out on paper. And I promise you once you start writing, more will come to you.

Then make a habit of doing this either daily or once a week. Adding things to this accomplishments journal is very rewarding, but also looking over the previous things that were written in this journal is very rewarding as well.

So really you can use this as a reward anytime you want to, even if you just read some of those accomplishments. Why this is a reward is because it feels good to us as humans to know what we’ve accomplished. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves of this.

What easier way to remind yourself then if you already have it written down in a journal that you can just read anytime you want to?

Our accomplishments make us feel really good, because the thoughts that we have about them and about ourselves. And those good feelings are gonna serve as such a nice reward.

Especially after a challenging day. And especially if you find yourself thinking negatively about yourself. This will be a nice little boost.

#5 is exercise. It doesn’t have to be any sort of strenuous or intense exercise if you do not enjoy doing that, it can just be a 20 minute walk or a 10 minute yoga or pilates class on YouTube. Or you could even turn on some music and dance around for 5 or 10 minutes.

The idea is to get your body moving and get that blood flowing so that you can feel good afterward. And also during. And when you feel good during or after something, your brain will remember that for next time.

So, you can start to anticipate whatever form of exercise it is that you choose to use as your reward. And if you don’t typically exercise, I recommend choosing something very easy and very bite-sized.

Number six is my new favorite, a self compliment journal. I think I’m actually going to start one of these. I so need this.

If you’re someone who finds yourself criticizing yourself often, or if you’re a perfectionist and you feel like you’re always falling short, because of course that’s going to happen when you strive for perfection, then you need to start one of these self-compliment journals as well. Just buy a small journal or notepad and dedicate it as your Self-Compliment Journal.

 So, what this is is you challenge yourself to write a self compliment or something that you love about yourself every day.

You can simply look forward to adding one in every day and that’s your reward for a challenging day, or you can do the challenge of adding one in every day and then for when you do have a challenging day, you can not only just add one in but you can read several or all of the others that are in there for a real big boost in self love.

#7 is home spa time. This can be lighting a candle, it can be using a really luxurious moisturizer, that you just use as your reward for those challenging days. It can be using a luxurious face mask. It can be using aromatherapy.

It can be doing all of these things at one time. This can promote feelings of relaxation, which can be very beneficial after a challenging day.

It also really just helps with emotional well-being because you’re slowing things down and giving yourself that time that you usually give to everyone else into your job.

So I know the new trend is to poo poo the bubble baths and face masks as not a good form of self-care, but come on, taking that time for yourself to slow things down and take care of your skin, take care of your body as far as physically relaxing, I think that is a good form of self-care period that’s not the only self-care, but that is one of many ways that you can provide yourself with some care.

#8 is meditation or even just 10 minutes of silence. This can feel like a real treat, because we often don’t reserve that little bit of time to just sit. You can either sit and think. Or you can sit and try not to think. Whatever you’d like. But meditation and 10 minutes of silence certainly have their health benefits.

The 9th of the non-food rewards for a challenging day is creative expression. This can be in the form of drawing, painting, coloring in an adult coloring book, writing, doing a craft, playing a musical instrument.

Doing these things can be so enjoyable and so rewarding. And of course, when you enjoy doing them, you’re going to anticipate how you’ll feel while doing them and even afterwards, partly because of what you’ve produced.

As you can see, these things all promote either emotional, mental, or physical well-being, many of them all three of those. They’re really great options for non food rewards for challenging days.

So, pick your favorite to start with. There are of course many other things you can use as reward.

The important part is that you choose something that you truly feel is a reward and that you can look forward to doing. Because like I said if you can get that dopamine hit just from the anticipation of this this is going to be so much better for you.

I’m just about finished with a new free course on crushing bad eating habits for career women, where teach you about three different common eating habits that career women have and give you very simple strategies to help you start to break these eating habits.

It’s coming out very soon and it comes with a workbook. There are five classes within the course, and they’re all bite size classes, roughly around 10 to 20 minutes for each.

I will link that new free course once it’s finalized. You’ll be able to find it on my website katemjohnston.com you’ll also be able to find it in many other places.

The reason why I mentioned this is because using food as a reward is one of the three common eating habits that I am teaching in this course. And again, the steps I teach you will get you started, are very easy to do, and I know you’re going to enjoy doing them. It won’t feel like hard work at all.

I’m going to be sending it out automatically to my entire e-mail list, so that’s an easy way for you to automatically get that new course once it’s ready.

So, you can sign up for my weekly emails with eating habit, weight loss, and mindset tips or you can sign up for my weight loss habits free class period both of those things are on my website katemjohnston.com.

And again, if you’re on my e-mail list already when that new course comes out, I will automatically send that to you along with the workbook.

Thanks for listening, take care and I’ll talk with you next week.