Procrastineating
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Georgie: [00:00:00] This is the breaking up with binge eating podcast, where every listen moves you one step closer to complete food freedom hosted by me, Georgie fear and my team at confident eaters.
Hi, and welcome to the show. I'm Georgie Fear. And as usual, Christina has joined me for today. How are you doing, Christina?
Christina: Doing great, just enjoying this evening in my new city.
Georgie: Yeah, so Christina has recently moved to Poland from the US, so it's a big jump, but so far she's, she's settling in and I'm impressed that you have begun to know how to speak Polish. I feel like I'd wander around for like six years before I learned how to say anything.
Christina: I definitely needed lessons because it's it's a difficult language, but I'm enjoying just trying it out. And most [00:01:00] everyone speaks English here, so you can definitely get by with English, thankfully. But I'm trying to put myself out there more and get to work. So yeah.
Georgie: Good to know. for when I visit.
Christina: exactly. Yeah.
Georgie: So today on the show, we are going to talk about procrastineating. So this is procrastination, where food is concerned.. So we shorten them to be procrastineating, instead of using two words. So this procrastineating may show up like snacking or grazing, or it may be the form of a binge. The type of eating or the magnitude of eating isn't really that important.
What is important is why it's happening. Because like many problems, as we discover the reasons why people do this behavior, then we can start to unlock solving those problems in new ways. So like other issues that we discuss on the show, procrastineating is something we can approach in layers. Addressing the surfaced issues is really the simplest and fastest, so we'll talk about that first. And it takes more [00:02:00] time and effort to change what's underneath in deeper layers. However, making corrections there can be worthwhile because you get a more fundamental change. On the surface, procrastineating is a food problem. When you have something or many things to do, but you go get something to eat instead, That's procrastineating. The quickest way to intervene and reroute this habit so it doesn't get in the way of your weight loss efforts is to swap in a different behavior. In other words, If you learn how to procrastinate without food, say by playing a game on your phone or watching TV, your weight loss efforts won't be sabotaged. You might find putting away dishes, folding laundry, playing a game, texting a friend, scrolling Instagram, or browsing a shopping website perfectly suitable, non caloric ways to delay working on a task.
Christina: Some other ideas which can improve your situation include designating a particular food you eat [00:03:00] when you're avoiding work and keeping yourself to that one food or pre planned snack. For example, your policy might be If I can't resist the urge to grab food between meals, I will have an apple. After my apple, that's it.
It's back to work. If your old habit was to cruise to the pantry eating chips, crackers, cookies, and anything else you could find that seemed appealing, eating an apple would be a big improvement. But this may sound to you like a less than ideal solution. Sure, swapping tasks or eating less energy dense food would help you avoid the extra calorie intake, but you still might feel badly about not staying on task or wasting time still. In that case, we want to work on a deeper level to have a more comprehensive solution. As we mentioned earlier, it takes a bit more work to discover exactly why you're stalling and handle those emotions skillfully. This is the second [00:04:00] level.
Georgie: You may have heard that procrastination is, at its heart, about anxiety. And that is often a helpful way to think about it. I mean, nobody procrastinates to avoid the actual task. We procrastinate to avoid the anxiety we think we will feel when we start doing the task. But it doesn't have to be anxiety per se. It can be any emotion that we associate with the task and don't want to feel. And as you might suspect, our expectations can set up a self fulfilling prophecy. When we tell ourselves, writing that essay will be frustrating and difficult, the first time we struggle to form a sentence and get it to read clearly, boom, we find it frustrating and difficult. We think, see, I was right. This sucks. And we might bail on it then and there.
Christina: A good example of this came up with a client of mine who found himself turning to food whenever he felt disappointed in his work. He'd noticed errors in his spreadsheet formulas or a misspelled word on a slide [00:05:00] deck for a presentation he had already given, and he started feeling disappointment, inadequate, and even anger at finding these errors, and that would lead him to walking away from his computer straight into the kitchen to make a snack. So we decided to focus on the distress he was feeling about being imperfect instead of what he was eating in the kitchen.
Georgie: That's a great example. It doesn't sound like anxiety was the main emotion for him it was these other emotions associated with the task so if you approached it as if it were anxiety and we used the strategies that we use when someone's feeling anxious they just might not have landed they might not have hit the nail on the head because his specific feelings were disappointment inadequacy and anger.
Christina: Mhm.
Georgie: For everybody listening, it may make you really uncomfortable to imagine facing the feelings you habitually dodge by snacking. But actually facing them often isn't as brutal as anticipated. [00:06:00] Feeling your feelings doesn't mean you have to meditate on them or focus on them. It can be a pretty brief process, actually, that leaves you feeling much better off. When was the last time a snack did that? The next time you notice you're feeling the urge to grab a snack to delay doing something, first try to identify what it is you're feeling. Some common emotions linked with procrastineating are feeling dread, anxiety, threatened, like if I get this wrong I will lose the account, feeling performance anxiety, fear that other people may not approve of your work or you, or feeling inadequate or self critical. Why can't I figure this out? I'm so stupid. Once you've identified the feeling, then you can logically ask, what will help me with this feeling? Do I need help from another person? Do I need more clarity on the task? Would it make me less anxious if I just took a small piece at a time? Do I need to rescue my confidence by reminding [00:07:00] myself of the many things I've done well, or the things I've been commended for? One of my favorite phrases to use when I am tempted to turn away from particular emotions is, I don't have to let this stop me. I can feel apprehensive. I don't have to let it stop me. I can feel doubtful and I can do it anyway. And so can you. Don't underestimate your own ability to move forward and keep doing something, even while you are feeling fear, sadness, or frustration.
Christina: I love that phrase. I don't have to let this stop me. I'm going to start using that. And honestly, it doesn't sound to me like getting a snack would help any of these emotions that you mentioned. So it just stalls the inevitable. We still have to do our responsibilities, even if we put them off at first.
And one more aspect, which I think is important to discuss is fatigue. When I speak with clients about their procrastineating, it can happen any time of day, but afternoon and evening are the most [00:08:00] common. Sometimes procrastineating is a way to delay starting a dreaded task, but it can also happen in the middle of working on something.
We think, I needed to use a bathroom, but once we're up out of our chairs, the next thing, you know, we have popped a bowl of popcorn. When working into the evening, people often don't take breaks because they want to get to the finish line as soon as possible because they just want to move on with their day, go to bed, watch tV, whatever.
However, pushing yourself too hard for too many hours is going to be met with resistance. In this case, The break might be taking you. Even if you don't grab food, you'll likely zone out for minutes at a time or find yourself doing unnecessary tasks like ordering new sunglasses on Amazon. Sometimes my clients aren't turning away from emotions when they snack as much as they are simply fatigued.
So give yourself permission to take breaks in other ways that don't involve food. If you [00:09:00] find yourself thinking, but I don't have time. I'd like to gently remind you that eating or binging takes up time too, so you're already spending some time not working. Why not swap it out for a quick restorative break of a different kind?
Georgie: To recap some of the ideas in this episode that we'd love for you to try, if procrastineating is a stumbling block for you, try designating a single food that is your only option. You can also open yourself up to new ways of procrastination that don't involve eating. Yes, you may still be wasting time, but you aren't interfering with your eating goals. Try to label the emotions associated with the task you most frequently procrastinate doing. Take a problem solving stance to see what would help lessen this feeling. Is there anything that would enable you to carry on despite having that feeling? Maybe it's a thought of the reward that you'll get for completing the task, even if that reward is simply your sense of relief that it's finally [00:10:00] done. Sometimes you may need to take on a much smaller piece of challenging work. Or set your mind to just persisting through a task, accepting whatever emotions it brings up. One of my physical therapists, in one of my many injuries, said, Sometimes you just have to say, damn the torpedoes and go. So when I think of, you know, persisting through something, even though you know it's going to make you anxious or uncomfortable, just saying damn the torpedoes and forging ahead.
And lastly, remember, you're not a machine. You need to rest and take breaks to do your best work. Trying to push a very fatigued brain to stay on a tedious task for too many hours has caused many people to binge. And if it doesn't produce a binge for you, it will at least lead to subpar work. If you found this episode helpful, please tell a friend. We also have lots more help available for you in our breaking up with binge eating coaching group. Our next group starts December 2nd, 2024. It's not [00:11:00] just for those who binge eat. Our curriculum is also designed for emotional eaters. To learn more, head to confidenteaters.Com or send me an email georgie at confidenteaters. com. See you in the next episode.