Overindulging Without the Regret

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Related Episodes:

• Indulging vs. Overindulging
• Overeating and Your Brain’s Job
• Your Belief About Food

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Full Episode Transcript:

Overindulging Without the Regret

Hi there, welcome to the podcast. So, we are in the holiday season and today is Thanksgiving here in the US. So, “Happy Thanksgiving” to all my US listeners. This also tends to be the season for holidays in other countries as well. So that’s why I decided to do this episode.

Oftentimes, we tend to overeat or overindulge around the holidays or even just in winter in general for several different reasons. One of those reasons can be that it is cold, and we want those warm comfort foods. Another reason could be that we’re sort of bored, with less activities in the winter sometimes for people. Other times, we can get that seasonal affective disorder and feel a little bit down or even depressed, which can then lead to overeating or overindulging.

And of course, with holidays, there are lots of sights and smells of delicious food and drink. There are also sometimes social influences that tend to result in overeating as well. For example, when someone offers you food that they made at a holiday party or when friends invite you out to dinner for the third time that week.

Usually with the holidays, the foods are a little bit more delicious than usual, right? The desserts, the cheeses, cured meats, Mom’s extra buttery mashed potatoes, Grandma’s stuffing, all the things. So, it’s very easy to overeat, but then oftentimes on top of that it is easy to overindulge, because the foods tend to be very rich and very indulgent.

I do have a podcast episode on indulging versus overindulging if you want a little bit more on the difference between the two. Plus, how to be more in control and be more likely to just indulge, rather than overindulge. I’ll link the podcast episode on the episode page, or if you’re listening via a podcast app, it is episode number 11.

Alright, so why would you want to be able to choose to overindulge without the regret afterwards? The reason is this. When you feel regret, how does that feel in your body? Probably badly. It at least is not a “feel good” emotion. It also serves no purpose. Regret itself does absolutely nothing to move forward and get back on track.

You might feel regret, and then have a thought that you don’t want to feel regret, and then think a new thought that will get you motivated to get back on track. But the regret itself, does not actually move you forward. It actually keeps you feeling stuck and oftentimes even in self-pity.

I’ll give you a quick example of recent regret that I was feeling and how this was not serving me. Once I realized that regret was not serving me, which I realized very quickly because I’m a life coach, I was able to form a new thought that created a much better feeling that then drove the actions I needed to take as my next step.

So what happened was I had been spending money on Facebook ads for my free class.

I finally got it performing very well over the past several months and because it was performing well as far as lots of career women getting access to my free class, I just sort of let it run. I didn’t realize how much money I had ended up spending on the ad until I looked at my ad spend a few days ago. It was a lot more than I thought and I hadn’t intended to spend that much.

I immediately went into feeling regret for not paying closer attention to it. That’s because I had a thought that led to that feeling of regret. I was then able to decide what feeling I would much rather feel and what thought I would need to have to feel that feeling. When taking into account the feeling that I wanted to feel, I considered what feeling I would need to start taking the actions and regain focus on my purpose of helping people that day that I was feeling regret.

Now of course, I didn’t want to feel excited that I had spent more money than I wanted too. I didn’t want to feel glad either. But I did want to feel acceptance. Because acceptance would enable me to move on. I wouldn’t feel badly with the feeling of acceptance. I wouldn’t stay stuck. I would be okay with the result that already occurred and move forward.

So, I came up with a couple of thoughts that would cause a feeling of acceptance in my body. One of them was I was able to help a lot of people with my free class and that could never be taken away. Another one was, those months that I had spent the money to get my ads working well, meant that in the future, when I restart ads, I will be way better off. I learned so much.

These thoughts felt so much better then thinking I had made a mistake or that I should have been keeping an eye on the costs. And these thoughts caused much better feelings than regret. The main feeling that I felt was acceptance. And even some gratitude as well.

My point of telling you this story is to show you how your thought will cause a feeling in your body, and if you want to change the feeling in your body, then you just need to change the thought. It’s really that simple. It’s not necessarily easy, because our brains are used to thinking a certain way sometimes. You can think of this as mindset or thought habits or default thinking.

However, once you practice this more and more, you get really good at it so that you can instantly do it just like I was able to. And you can use it for anything in your life, which is the amazing thing, not just overindulging without the regret. That’s what coaches help people do. See just how much control they have of their results with their own thoughts.

So, when it comes to feeling regret or really any negative emotion after overindulging, you need to look at the thought that was creating that regret. You can decide if you want to keep that feeling of regret or not.

One way to decide is to take a look at how regret feels in your body and also take a look at the actions or inactions that occur because of the regret. You’ll probably notice that you might sit in self-pity or just stay stuck in that feeling of regret. You’ll probably also notice that regret doesn’t make you feel motivated to move forward so that you can do the actions you need to do to continue working on the results you want.

Once you decide that you don’t want to stay in regret, think of the thought that is causing the feeling of regret. You might think that the act of overindulging itself caused the feeling, however there is a thought in between there. So, if you overindulged, what was your thought about you overindulging? it could be as simple as thinking “I shouldn’t have eaten two desserts.”

Sometimes it can be much more harsh. You might even notice that you’re really mean to yourself and beat yourself up.

Now once you’ve noticed the thought that you had that caused that feeling of regret decide if you want to keep that feeling of regret. Does that thought feel good to you? Does the feeling of regret feel good to you?

Now sometimes, you’re so used to a feeling of regret that it might feel comfortable to you. You might feel like it’s one of your common emotions that’s almost like a baseline emotion.

So, then I challenge you to ask yourself if you could make it different, would you choose to have regret as an emotion every time you overate or overindulged? Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a different feeling afterward? I’m guessing yes.

So, if you decide that you don’t want to have that feeling of regret, then what feeling would you rather have instead that still feels true to you? For example, like my example Facebook ads, I didn’t necessarily want to feel glad or excited, but I did want to feel acceptance.

So oftentimes, I do recommend moving from a negative to a more neutral emotion, rather than from a negative to a positive emotion if this seems like too big of a jump. Especially if the negative emotion is very negative, like at the extreme. Because then if you choose a positive emotion to shift to, it’s going to be much harder to find the thoughts that are going to support that positive emotion, when you’re used to thinking such negative thoughts causing that really negative emotion. Does that make sense?

Once you have a few thoughts in mind, and I would recommend writing them down, pick one thought that is believable to you and that feels better than the original thought that led to the feeling of regret. Say that thought in your head or out loud, you might have to do it a few times, but then really focus on how that feels in your body.

Does that produce the feeling that you were going for, or at least something similar that feels better than regret? Now because this takes some practice, I would practice thinking that thought and even keeping it in a nearby place so you can read it and practice it often anytime that you overindulge or even just anytime, and then really pay attention to how your body feels.

Meaning, what feeling is produced in your body from that thought. Notice how your energy is going to shift with that feeling compared to the feeling of regret. You’re probably going to be much more motivated to move forward period to do the actions or avoid certain things that you need to do to get the results you want. Whether those results are eating less in general on a daily basis, eating less sugar or flour, losing 20 pounds, whatever your goal may be.

I would even encourage you to write down a list of the actions, reactions, or inactions that would occur due to the new feeling that you have created with your thoughts. You can then also write down the actions, reactions, or inactions that have occurred in the past due to a feeling of regret after overindulging.

Look at the difference between these two lists. Each of these lists of actions is going to produce different results as well, so you can even go on to write down what main result you would get with the actions, reactions, or inactions that were created from the new feeling, and also the main result you would get with the actions, reactions, were in actions that were created from the old feeling of regret.

So interesting when you do this simple exercise. So empowering too, right?

You can create better results for yourself simply by changing your thought. And that’s what a coach helps you with. Even other coaches have coaches, because sometimes we can’t see some of our own thoughts and how they are creating our results and how to work through that, but someone on the outside can.

I have a coach and I’ve created so many results for myself since having a coach. You can get started on your own by just being aware of your feelings as well as your thoughts though. Then, deciding if those thoughts and feelings are serving you. Meaning are they doing you a service or a disservice? Are they helping you to move toward the results you want or the goal that you are working toward? Or do you feel like your thoughts are keeping you feeling stuck?

I used to think that my thoughts were just my thoughts and that I could do nothing about that. I also used to think that I would just feel certain feelings and wouldn’t be able to do anything about that either. I learned that this was completely untrue, and I want you to know this as well, because it provides hope. And hope, is a really incredible feeling.

Alright my friend, I hope you learned a lot from this episode. Go and enjoy your Thanksgiving and if you’re listening to this after Thanksgiving or after another holiday, then be sure to use this anytime you feel that you’ve overindulged or overeaten. Take care and I’ll talk with you soon.