the over-analyze→ indecisive → f*ck it eat cycle

Why Am I Eating This Now? Live: Align Your Life and Eating (WAIETN) is now open for registration. Today is the last day to save $100. Enter code earlybird or earlybirdpp (for payment plan).

“Every morning, my first thought is judging if I ate good or bad the day before. And this determines my mood. And then I go to my closet and overthink what I should wear based on if I feel fat or not.”

“I can’t unsee what I know about our food supply. So I try to avoid dairy but then I know how almond milk uses an insane amount of water. Regardless of which I choose, I feel guilty and don’t enjoy my coffee.”

“I analyze everything way, way too much and then I’m like F*ck it and I eat.”

These former pre-WAIETN client shares were my life in my early 20s; I know this space personally and professionally. It’s exhausting. Anxiety-ridden. And hard.

What I wish I knew then — and what you will discover in WAIETN — is that the over-analyze→ indecisive → f*ck it eat cycle is a symptom of psychological inflexibility.

These former pre-WAIETN client shares were my life in my early 20s; I know this space personally and professionally. It’s exhausting. Anxiety-ridden. And hard.

What I wish I knew then — and what you will discover in WAIETN — is that the over-analyze→ indecisive → f*ck it eat cycle is a symptom of psychological inflexibility.

And psychological flexibility is required for sustainable health eating and stress resolution rooted in freedom, not white knuckling.

Specifically, this mental chaos is generated from having rigid beliefs of what’s “good” and “bad”. With food. And our stress.

To stop this analysis-paralysis effectively, you need to:

Uncover the beliefs generating this chaos. Without this clarity, you have zero control as you don’t know what you don’t know.
Have a decision making filter that works with your life now, not what was “good”/what worked in college, pre-Motherhood, or menopause.

We call this Option C in WAIETN. Option C is looking at what has emerged in the present and brings context to your decision. Overtime, you will free yourself from these rigid beliefs.

For example, in yesterday’s workshop, I shared how the key to my health recovery, 20 pound weight loss, and redesigning my business for more impact, menopause, and Mothering these past few years, was working on my Tired trigger.

The tired eating trigger results from a rigid belief that “being busy and productive” is good and “slowing down and resting” is bad (You’ll learn the other three rigid beliefs attached to each stress eating trigger in WAIETN).

If you turn to food when stressed, sugar and caffeine drinks help override your tiredness to be more productive. Or, “I deserve this eating” results because you want a reward for your accomplishments (often these accomplishments don’t feed your soul which is why you turn to food).

I don’t turn to food anymore. But I did have one last vice: overworking. And I’ve been doing psychological flexibility work long enough to know my body struggles are invitations into more freedom and soul alignment.

So I took myself through the WAIETN process to stop overworking, which was leaving no time to tend to my body, worsening my health and weight, and leaving me not feeling present with Eça.

Thankfully, I had unlearned this “If I’m busy and productive I’m good” belief with food 20 years ago. I realized the more I thought about food, read about food, meal planned — was busy with food — the more unproductive and worse the results (research now illuminates how more thinking about our weight leads to more weight gain).

I had also unlearned it with exercise as the harder I worked out (which I incorrectly thought was productive for weight loss), the more I wanted to reward myself with food because I had accomplished something I didn’t enjoy.

So I had receipts as they cool kids say (self-trust as I say), there was more nuance or flexibility with this belief.

But pre-Motherhood and menopause, I drank the hustle culture Kool-Aid (naturally sweetened and dye-free of course!). It worked for me.

Yet in my current life, being busy and productive led to insomnia, burn-out, and being really short-fused.

I used the WAIETN values-based decision making filter, called Option C, for my current, real life. And what I uncovered was what works for my current life is not what I’ve been told and sold to value.

Option C is the grounded center that stops your over-analyzing, indecisiveness, and restrictive good-bad orientation (also described as all-or-nothing or black and white thinking). In every context of your life. It’s a flex of flexible psychology 😎.

Having this filter 1) prevents stress as you get clear on what you want on your metaphorical plate and 2) when stress happens, you’re able to respond with self-authored values, so the stress is more manageable.

And this is important because a lot of what we’ve been told to value, like Hustle Culture, isn’t sustainable for our bodies, lives, or the Earth.

As a result, in our cultural and individual shadows are values like slowness, enoughness, and interdependence.

What is unique about my WAIETN Option C tool is it’s rooted in your current life, not a theoretical coaching values exercise. This matters because the Option C tool allows your new values to emerge.

For example, I’ve never valued slowness. But in using the Option C tool, I saw the value in slowness, I am more:

Present to my life and Eça’s, not just rushing all the time.
Creative in my work.
Patient and let things sit for much more productive outcomes.
Healthy (i.e. reduced inflammation, sleeping well, and lost 20 pounds (25 pounds of fat and kept it off because my weight is coming of slowly)
Athletic and love challenging myself at the gym in ways that work for my body now

Most profound? I realized I don’t have to push so hard. I’ve always wanted to believe that what is for me will find me instead of having to strive so much. I’m closer in knowing when this is true.

Being able to use my stress to feel more freedom (versus emotionally and binge eat), all started when I used this process to understand my relationship with food 20 years ago. And I keep applying it to all aspects of my evolving life, because it works.

You stop the over-analyze→ indecisive → f*ck it eat cycle with psychological flexibility. And we do that by learning more nuance in the cultural beliefs and values we’ve been socialized into, often without our permission.

In WAIETN, you will work on your top trigger that makes you turn to food and corresponding rigid belief that perhaps worked for you before, but doesn’t now.

As the coaching maxim says, “What got you here won’t get you where you want to go.”

Do you want to be good (based on your life that no longer exists)?

Or Free?

With food and life?

Why Am I Eating This Now? Live: Align Your Life and Eating will support you to break free from over-analyze→ indecisive → f*ck it eat cycle when you get in touch with your own Option C center.

Your food battle is inviting you into more freedom. But first you have to find your center.

As Brandi Carlile sings in “The Eye”:

I am a sturdy soul and there ain’t no shame

In lying down in the bed you made

Can you fight the urge to run for another day?

You might make it further, if you learn to stay

I wrapped your love around me like a chain
But I never was afraid that it would die
You can dance in a hurricane
But only if you’re standing in the eye
You can dance in a hurricane
But only if you’re standing in the eye

WAIETN Live is open for registration today thru Monday, September 18.
Early bird savings ends today.

Want to learn more?

Here’s more on who this program is for (bad joiners who hate small talk), how we’ll break the cycle, client results, and success stories.

Be Well,

P.S. Are you a change agent interested in supporting clients to birth the values required for sustainable results AND leadership that won’t recreate the same unsustainable, collapsing systems that are no longer working?

Consider my Truce Coaching Certification, which opens for registration September 18-October 6. To learn more, sign up for these three free upcoming events. They’re all on Tuesdays at 12 pm EST.

The Missing Piece in Sustainable Change: Understanding Complex Change (9/19)
Walk Your Talk: The Business Case for Personal Development (9/26)
TCC Alumni Open House (10/3)

In TCC, we learn how to help our clients self-author their values, because the world we grew up in no longer exists. New values are required for these times. WAIETN is just one version of a program created that supports clients self-authoring their values and was derived from my TCC methodology.

P.P.S. I shared the four triggers that activate these rigid beliefs and prevent psychological flexibility in yesterday’s workshop. Watch a limited replay through Monday, September 18, the last day of WAIETN registration.