You Are NOT Your Eating Habits

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Full Episode Transcript:

You Are Not Your Eating Habits

Welcome, welcome. I’m glad you’re here to join me in today’s episode. Today I want to talk to you about eating habits and self-identity, more specifically how you are NOT your eating habits. What I mean by this is that your identity is not how or what you eat. I’ll of course dive into why and also teach you how to separate yourself from your eating habits.

I wanted to do this as an episode topic because it’s not one that has been well-covered, at least in what I’ve found. I think it’s really important to clear up though, because it may be part of what is holding you back if you’re feeling like you’re not getting to where you want to be with your eating habits, meaning not reaching your goals.

Just a little invitation before we begin though. I’m teaching a live workshop on How to Break a Sugar Habit, and it’s specifically to help career women. It’s going to be virtual, meaning online. It’ll be through Zoom. The cost to you is nothing. It’s completely free. It’s on Thursday, September 22^nd at 7pm ET.

There will be a replay available, however I encourage you to come live, because you can ask any questions you want while you’re there and if you need help with a particular challenge you’re having with your eating habits, I can help you with that. I’ll be teaching the first 20-30 minutes or so, then taking any questions and coaching anyone who needs help. You can even pre-submit a question ahead of time when you sign up for the workshop if you prefer that.

If you do attend live, virtually of course, AND become a member in Food Freedom, my program that enables career women break their bad eating habits, then I’ll send you a gift in the mail. I cannot wait to start sending these gifts out. I just received them, so they are in my office, ready to be packaged up and sent to your home if you become a member after coming to the live workshop.

For those who are shy or may want to join the workshop while cooking dinner, no one will see or hear you on the call unless you volunteer to come on live to ask a question or get coached. You can also type into the chat box at any time during the workshop, with any questions, comments or things you need help on.

To sign up, just go to katemjohnston.com/workshop. It takes about 10 seconds, because all you need to sign up is your first name and an email I can send the Zoom invitation link to. You can also find the link to sign up, on the episode page.

Alright, so let’s dive into this episode on ‘you are not your eating habits’. So what exactly do I mean by this? You, your identity as a human being, your soul, is something that is with you your whole life. Things around that can change and do change. Such as likes, dislikes, your outside appearance, even some personality traits, right? From child to adult, you’re still you at the core, however there are lots of changes that take place.

Same thing as an adult. Your appearance, your likes, hobbies, knowledge or wisdom, can change. Certain personality traits can change, or you can go from being relaxed and “easy going” to being more intense or assertive. So there are lots of different things you can change or that just naturally change, but you’re still you at the core, right?

Just like I’m still Kate, even though SO many things have changed about me.

Now, one of the things I left out was behaviors. Your behaviors can change dramatically, or subtly, but you’re still you, right? You’re still a constant, even though your behaviors might change. Just like you’re still a constant, even if your likes/dislikes change, or if your outside appearance changes. Or even if you experience some personality changes over the decades.

So, eating habits are just simply eating behaviors that have been repeated many times in the same context, meaning time, place, situation, that they’ve become automatic.

Therefore, when I say, “you are not your eating habits,” I truly mean it. You’re not your behaviors that you’ve repeated multiple times right? Your identity as a human being, your identity as you, is not defined by actions that you take or don’t take. Actions or behaviors (I used those terms interchangeably) are independent of you, your soul, your identity.

Why do I know that? Because you are you, from the time you’re born, until the time you die, and maybe even in the afterlife too, so you’re that constant that is always there and everything else changes around you. You even have control of many of those changes. Some of those you can change on a whim, right?

You might still be thinking, “ehhh, I’m not really sure I understand or believe that, Kate.” I get that. I’m going to give you the first example that came to my mind to help you understand why you’re identity is separate from your behaviors, okay?

So, imagine a car. Just for fun, let’s imagine my favorite car, a Porsche 911. One I do not own but has been my dream car for a long time. Now, of course a Porsche is not a human being and does not have a soul, but just humor me for a bit here. So you can change the color of the Porsche, you can even change the seat upholstery, or even change the performance of the car by changing the tires, certain things with the engine and transmission. It’s still a Porsche 911 though, right?

The Porsche can also do different things, performance-wise, meaning the actions. It can stop, accelerate quickly, decelerate, drive over 100mph, drive at only 30mph. No matter what the Porsche does, it’s still a beautiful Porsche. Nothing can take that away and nothing can change that.

Now of course I know you’re not a car, but the same holds true for you. You’re you, regardless of if you overeat, undereat, eat lots of sugar, don’t eat any sugar at all. You’re still your beautiful you, regardless of what your body looks like and regardless of if you have high blood pressure from eating a lot of salt. You’re still you regardless of “falling off the wagon” one week with your eating habits or having a habit of emotionally eating.

Your eating behaviors and habits may not be what you want them to be, but that does not define you. They’re just simply things that are always changing around you, or at least have the ability to change.

Something I’ve noticed since I’ve been an Eating Habit Coach, is that women who want to change their eating habits tend to think and feel so negatively about themselves because they think that their eating habits or their body weight is who they are. This causes a lot of self-judgement. Self-judgement that doesn’t go away and can even get worse, when someone fails to believe they CAN change their eating habits.

Once you see that your eating habits are just behaviors that have been repeated and not who you are for life, you’ll start feeling some power over them. You’ll start seeing how they’re something you DO have control of. They’re not who you are. They’re not constant. They’re something that can be changed. Sometimes easily, sometimes they may take a little more work or trying a new strategy, but they can absolutely be changed, especially when there’s help available.

Now I just want to briefly talk about some ways that you might tend to identify yourself as your eating habits, plus the downsides.

A common one is emotional eating. Many women, especially career women will identify themselves as an emotional eater. To emotionally eat, means to eat in response to an emotion, usually a negative emotion that doesn’t feel good, in order to try to decrease the discomfort or pain of the negative emotion with some pleasure from the food.

Common emotions that lead to emotional eating are stress, boredom, sadness, loneliness, and self-pity. To think of yourself as an emotional eater, makes it more difficult to move away from emotional eating. That’s because your brain will have a harder time separating the emotional eating as just a behavior and will instead treat it as something you’re “stuck with.”

This is NOT empowering. It can make you feel hopeless, right? Whereas, once you separate yourself from the eating behavior or eating habit, it’s a little easier to see this as something you can change.

When you identify as your eating habits, it can seem much harder to change that habit if it feels more permanent. It’s not permanent though, because it’s not you, no matter how long you’ve had that particular eating habit.

Another way you might be identifying yourself as your eating habits is if you feel like you just eat unhealthy foods in general. So some people might say or think, “I’m an unhealthy eater.” This can sometimes feel defeating right? Like it’s just a fact. It’s not a fact though and it’s not your identity. You may be in the habit of choosing less healthy foods, but that’s just the behavior on repeat.

When you change out, “I’m an unhealthy eater” for “I tend to choose less healthy foods,” it’s a little less judge-y, right? It also separates you from the actions, making it easier to tackle changing the action or behavior. If the behavior isn’t seen as an identity, you can separate them out. It’s easier to change an action than it is to change who you are, right?  

Another example of a way you might be identifying yourself as your eating habits is if you have been diagnosed with an eating disorder or if you’ve sort of diagnosed yourself, whether it be an accurate diagnosis or not. I fairly recently had a woman tell me she was diagnosed as a binge eater and asked if that means she can never change her eating habits.

I told her no, that doesn’t not mean she could never change her eating habits, because binge eating is just the eating behavior that has been done enough times that it’s a habit and that her eating behaviors are separate from who she internally. So, her thinking her identity was that she is a binge eater, kept her from thinking that she could actually change. I wanted her to realize that all of our behaviors and habits are “changeable” no matter if it’s a self-diagnosis or a clinical diagnosis.

And in the case of eating habits not being diagnosed as a disorder, I want you to know that whatever your eating habit may be that you’re struggling with, it’s not a label and especially not a permanent label. It’s not stamped on you forever. It doesn’t define you as a person. You are not your eating habits.

So how do you actually separate yourself from your eating habits?

It all starts with your thoughts.  So if you’re identifying yourself as a certain eating habit such as an emotional eater, someone who eats too much _____, an overeater, a binge-eater, someone who doesn’t eat enough, someone who can’t resist potato chips, whatever it may be, write it down.

Then, you’re going to separate yourself from the eating habit by writing a new sentence. In this sentence, you’ll start your sentence with “I” then follow it with the act of doing the behavior itself.

I’ll give some examples.

Say you identity yourself as a boredom eater. You’ll write down that sentence, “I’m a boredom eater.”

Then you’ll write your sentence that separates you from the eating behavior, which may look like, “I sometimes eat when I’m bored.” Or it could even be “I oftentimes eat when I’m bored.” Try not to say “always” because honestly, chances are that you ALWAYS eat when you’re bored are slim to none, even though it may sometimes seem like it to you.

Do you see how “I’m a boredom eater” and “I sometimes (or oftentimes) eat when I’m bored” feel different? If these thoughts were occurring, which one thought would make changing your eating habits seem a little easier?

I’m going to give an example that is the reverse, which will help you to understand this a little more I think.

Say I tend to overeat at dinner most nights. I could think, “I overeat at dinner most nights.” Or I could think, “I’m an overeater.” Which one seems more changeable? Said differently, which one seems less permanent? Definitely the first one, which separates myself from the eating habit by making it clear it’s just a behavior or action I do, rather than identifying as that eating behavior.

It makes it seem more doable to change the behavior if I wanted to, right? Rather than feel like it’s a label for life. That’s what happens when you identify as your eating habits. It’s now a label that you feel you have, which makes it harder for your brain to believe you can change it.

That’s not very motivating or empowering is it? So that’s why I wanted to teach you today that you are not your eating habits. That’s really great news because that means you aren’t stuck with certain ones you may not want to keep. You can break the ones you don’t like, or that have been making it difficult for you to reach your goals, whether they be health goals, weight loss goals, any kind of goals.

And just as a reminder, if you have a sugar habit you’d like to start effectively breaking, then come to the free online workshop on Thursday, September 22^nd at 7pm ET. Sign up at katemjohnston.com/workshop or with the link on the episode page. If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you can also sign up there with the link in my profile.

Thanks so much for listening today. Take care and I’ll talk with you soon.