11 Eating Habit Tips for Career Women

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Full Episode Transcript:

11 Eating Habit Tips for Career Women

Hi there, welcome to the Eating Habits for Life podcast. And welcome to episode #100. Just like the number on the scale, it’s just a number. But we can celebrate numbers if we want to, because celebration is something positive.

I’m going to give you 11 eating habit tips for career women. These tips will help you with eating habits during your work day and outside of your work day.

These are tips that will benefit career women, as far as thinking about challenges that career women have when it comes to eating habits.

So let’s jump right in. Tip #1 is to learn your hunger signals. This is tip #1 for a reason. Many people don’t even know what their hunger signals are. When I say hunger signals, I mean what actually alerts you to the fact that you might be hungry and it’s time to eat something?

Hunger signals are physical signals that your brain is sending your body to let you know that it might be time to eat something. Now of course, you’re always going to be the judge of that, as far as following through on eating something.

But what ends up happening is that many of us eat for reasons other than hunger. And with these 11 eating habit tips for career women, I will address several of those other reasons.

So learn your hunger signals. Ask yourself what physical sensations do you actually feel that alert you to the fact that you might be hungry.

Tip #2 is eat when you’re hungry and stop before that uncomfortable fullness. You want to eat until you’re starting to feel like you’ve had enough, instead of feeling overly full. You don’t want that uncomfortable distended feeling.

Now, to help you with eating when you’re hungry and stopping before that uncomfortable fullness, I will offer you tip #3. Tip #3 is to eat without distraction.

Eating while doing something else is mindless eating and is very automatic, very habitual. We want to move away from that.

It’s very common for career women to eat while they’re working. I understand that it may seem like you don’t have time to eat separately, but how long does it take you to eat your lunch?

If you’re eating while you’re working, it may actually take you longer to eat your lunch. If you’re just eating your lunch, it probably only takes about 10 minutes.

You have 10 minutes of time, I promise you. Besides, that little mental break from work can help you be more productive for the afternoon, so that you can do more in less time.

And if your boss is putting too much work on you and you feel like you don’t have 10 minutes of time, then you need to talk to your boss. Because this is a matter of health.

Tip #4 is pack your own lunch, to decrease likelihood of ordering food out, or even not eating at all and letting yourself become overly hungry.

Overhunger never leads to great decisions surrounding food and often lead to overeating.  

Tell help with this, I recommend packing the night before, so that you’re not rushed the morning of. You can choose a specific time that you will pack your lunch for the next day come out to make it more likely to become an actual habit of doing so.

Tip #5 is to decide ahead of time how many times you’ll order lunch out or go out to eat. Many times, we can get sucked in when people at work ask us if we want to go out to happy hour, or go out to lunch.

Why deciding ahead of time is better than deciding in the moment, is because you’re using the part of your brain called the prefrontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that’s more future focused.

When you’re making decisions in the moment, you’re much more likely to be using the primitive part of the brain to make decisions. This part of the brain wants to increase pleasure.

So if that pizza sounds delicious in the moment, you’re likely going to go ahead with that. Rather than eating the healthier lunch that you brought in to work.

So making that decision ahead of time, like on a Sunday night, how many times maximum you will go out to eat, will help create a plan. When there is an actual plan in place, you are likely to follow through on the decision that will help you with your goals.

To go along with this tip, I also recommend making a statement out loud as far as how many times you’ll go out to eat, or writing this down. Be as specific as you can. When you write down your intention or say it out loud, you’re more likely to follow through on it. Research supports this.

And part of my coaching process, is a five step process that helps you to implement a plan to assist with follow through. This 5-step process also helps with consistency, and building trust and confidence with yourself. Because of that, the process itself creates new, healthier habits.

Tip #6 is get comfortable with saying no thank you. How many times come have you eaten something that you didn’t want to eat, because you felt uncomfortable saying no thank you? We all are so afraid that we’re going to offend someone, that we end up saying yes to things that we don’t want to be saying yes to.

Or you do want the cookie that the person is offering, but you don’t want it because you’re trying to change your eating habits. Or you’re trying to lose weight, but you still end up saying yes anyway.

So get comfortable with saying no thank you. You’re actually not offending the person. Someone can only feel offended because of their own thoughts. You have no control over the emotions that they feel in their body.

That’s because their brains control their emotions that they feel in their bodies. Your brain and your body does not control the emotions that they feel in their body. I know this is mind blowing, but it is true.

Tip #7 is to have some sort of a snack available to you for your commute home. This has come up for clients, that they’re so hungry after work that they go into the kitchen and start eating whatever. And it’s usually something that’s quick and easy like the bag of chips or the sleeve of cookies.

When hunger feels urgent, it’s easy to eat a large volume. You’re eating quickly, and you just want to get the food in your belly. I get it. I’ve been there multiple times in the past. Now, I eat so much more mindfully and it doesn’t take noticeably longer.

When you’re eating those snacks after work, you’re not necessarily hungry for dinner. But you feel that you should eat dinner with your family. So this results in overeating.

So having something small available to you for your commute home just in case you are very hungry is going to be a lifesaver. It will decrease that hunger enough that you will be able to then go home, do dinner as planned and not overeat.

It also decreases the likelihood that you end up stopping for takeout because you’re so darn hungry.

Tip #8 is when you feel yourself wanting a snack either during your workday or in the evening, ask yourself if you’re truly hungry.

A lot of times we feel like we want something, but we’re not actually hungry. There’s another reason for wanting that thing period sometimes it’s desire and a craving. Sometimes it’s out of boredom.

It’s good practice to start asking yourself if you’re truly hungry or if it’s something else. This is actually one of the first skills that I help my clients master. It truly is life-changing when it comes to eating habits and also weight loss.

Tip #9 is have an easy backup dinner in case you work later than planned. Or it was an exhausting day and you can’t bear the thought of cooking the dinner you had planned on cooking.

This helps to decrease the likelihood of getting that takeout food.

An easy backup dinner can look like a sandwich. Or scrambled eggs with some frozen vegetables and some cheese on top. It doesn’t have to be your traditional meat, potatoes and vegetable kind of a dinner.

It can also be leftovers. Or even a healthy-ish frozen dinner. That’s going to be better than fast food or the pizza, right?

Tip #10 is to decide ahead of time what kind of a non-food reward you’re going to reward yourself with for the end of a workday. Or the end of a tough work day or for something you accomplished at work.

It’s so easy to reward yourself with food or with a bottle of wine. But we want to move away from using food as reward.

So, decide ahead of time what it will be. The benefit of deciding ahead of time is again is that you’re using your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is much more future-focused than the more primitive part of the brain.

The other benefit is that we get a release of dopamine, which provides that feeling of pleasure when we get a reward, and with the anticipation of a reward.

So, if you choose something ahead of time that you can treat yourself to, you get to have that dopamine hit with the anticipation of getting that reward. And then you get another dopamine hit when you actually get that reward.

And tip #11, let’s talk about stress eating and boredom eating. Or a little bit more specifically, stress snacking and boredom snacking. Because oftentimes, snacking is what is brought on by boredom or stress.

So, if you recall tip #8, where I’m having you ask yourself if you’re actually hungry when you get that feeling that you want to eat something?

You’re going to investigate a little bit and see if you’re feeling something like stress or boredom. Or another emotion that isn’t exactly a positive emotion.

Often, the uncomfortable emotions or the negative emotions are the ones that are going to lead to emotional eating.

So get curious and see if you are feeling an emotion that may be triggering you to eat. If you are, just identify that emotion. Meaning, if you feel like stressed and that’s causing an urge to eat something, then just be like “ohh I’m feeling stress right now.”

Just acknowledging that is going to help to put a little bit of pause in between that urge to eat something and actually eating something.

And it helps you to learn your body and behaviors more. Which is a big part of changing your eating habits. Once you identify that emotion, you’re going to then create more of a pause in between that urge to eat something and actually eating something. This is done by tuning into your body and describing how that emotion feels.

An emotion is just physical sensations. Some people call them vibrations in your body.

So tuning into your body and feeling and describing those sensations helps create that pause between the urge to eat and actually eating. It also helps that emotion to pass through you, rather than staying there in your body.

I like to think of it like this. The emotion is like a little kid trying to get your attention. If you ignore it, it’s going to persist. Just like a kid would persist with trying to get your attention.

If you acknowledge it, it will stop tugging on your shirt and saying mom mom mom. And then you can answer the kids question, or you can address the emotion, and it’ll be on its merry way.

Also, if you think about the emotion like being a little kid trying to get your attention, an emotion is actually your brain alerting you to something you’re thinking about. Our thoughts always create our emotions. So emotions are actually just helpful things.

Once we start seeing emotions as helpful and something that we can actually feel in our body, those negative ones become less terrible.

Also, we can then address the emotions by addressing the thoughts causing the emotions. I won’t dive deeply into this, because this is very individualized, and where one-on-one coaching is necessary.

In my one-on-one coaching program, how I help you break and create new habits is based on behavioral science. This is very strategy-based, but our behaviors are always because of our emotions, our feelings. And our feelings or emotions are always from a thought we have. So it is all interconnected.

To have success with changing your eating behaviors, the thoughts and feelings must be included as well.

To have success with weight loss, the thoughts and feelings must be included as well. Which is why coaching is so effective for both eating habit change and weight loss. Rather than following a diet or just being told to eat this and not that.

If it was easy to change your eating habits or lose weight just by being told what and how much to eat, then we’d all have healthy diets and weights.

Why that’s not the case is because of thoughts and emotions. Which is why when I work with you one-on-one in my coaching program, I teach skills and tools to manage your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Resulting in true eating habit change and weight loss that actually lasts.

So that’s what I have for you on 11 eating habit tips for career women.

If you want the most direct way to break bad eating habits permanently, I can help.

My coaching program brings you through a proven process. It’s structured, but also individualized. And that’s the benefit of one-on-one coaching. We get to look at and manage your thoughts, your feelings and your specific behaviors.

All you need to do to find out how exactly I can help you, is to set up a free consultation with me. During the free consultation, I listen and ask questions. Think of it like telling your doctor what is ailing you, what you’ve tried, what makes it worse for you, etc.

Then, from there, I can see exactly what’s going on and provide solutions. And just like at the doctor’s office, you get to then decide if you like my “treatment plan” and ask any questions.

Then you decide if you’d like to move forward with my help to break your bad eating habits, form new ones, lose weight, etc.

You just need to book your free consultation with the link in the episode description or right on my website katemjohnston.com/consult.

Thanks for listening in on those 11 Eating Habit Tips for Career Women. Take care.