How to FEEL Better [Ep. 73]

This is the Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well podcast. I'm Lisa Saulsberry and this is episode 73. How to feel better? Welcome to Eat Well, Think Well, Live Well; the podcast for women who want to lose weight, but are tired of counting and calculating all the food. I'm your host, Lisa Salsbury. I'm a certified health and weight loss coach and life coach, and most importantly a recovered chronic dieter. I'll teach you to figure out why you are eating when you aren't hungry, instead of worrying so much about what you are eating. Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast today. We are going to talk about feelings so fun, right? Okay. So before we get into this concept, first, I want to give a very quick and dirty model review. So if you don't know what the model is, I sometimes refer to it as the model or the self coaching model. You can check my full episode on this topic. It's very early on it's episode four. And, I have a full explanation there and really teach you all about it. There's a download you can get on that episode. Um, but I chat about it here and there over the course of the podcast. So hopefully you're kind of familiar with it. This is the model that comes from the life coach school self coaching model is what the official title is from the life coach school designed by Brooke Castillo. There's five parts to it, and you can actually put anything in the world in it. It's based on cognitive behavioral theory, psychology, but it's useful to the everyday person, not just for a psychologist or a therapist, which is. Cognitive behavior theory is useful in that way. And this is kind of an easy application of that theory to put it in something that we can understand and use on our day-to-day lives. So. it has five parts. And so I always list it down the side of my whiteboard when I've got clients as C T F a R. So the first line is the C line, and this is the circumstance line. And we put in this line, just the facts. So these are things we can agree on in a court of law maybe, or if 50 people are in a room together, they're all going to agree. So this is things like the weather. Your age, your weight, other people's words, who the president is and how many cookies are in the cabinet. So when I say the weather, what I mean is it is raining or it is 72 degrees, right? it's not, gosh, it's hot outside. Because everybody wouldn't agree that 72 or 85 or 91 is hot outside. It depends on your perspective. Right? And so the next line is the second line. The T line is our thoughts, and these are the sentences in the brain. And it's the meaning that we give to the circumstance. So the sound like it's hot outside or I'm feeling old today, Or I need to lose weight. These are thoughts. Other people's words are in the circumstance line. So like he said, X, Y, Z, and you're thinking that was mean, or that was delightful. So we have all of these things. Um, I think one of the circumstances I mentioned was how many cookies are in the cabinet. And I think that's really valid here because a lot of times we're thinking I have to eat the cookies because they're in the cabinet, but then being in the cabinet. Is neither here nor there until we have a thought about them. And, you know, this is true because sometimes you forget about things that are in the cabinet and you find them later and you're like, oh, I didn't know this was in there. And so that's how you can see that separation from the circumstance and the thought. So the third line is the feelings or emotions. We call this the F Lang. So we use feelings here, but really the word feelings and emotions as completely interchangeable. This is a singular word in this line. Uh, peaceful, frightened, jealous, appreciative, lonely, excited, curious. Okay. Do you hear it there? Just the way we are feeling in a singular emotion word. This is like the vibration also that is going through your body. You're describing this vibration in this singular word, and we can almost always identify a location for an emotional vibration. And if you don't believe me, think about when you're nervous, for example, and you maybe have to give a public speech and you say I'm so nervous. I have butterflies in my tummy. And that is one of the best ways you can really think about oh yes. Nervous energy. Kind of resides right there in your gut region. Sometimes when we have a craving, we'll get sort of a tightness at the back of the throat or in kind of like underneath the jaw, you'll get kind of that tightness there. You have things that sit heavy on your chest. Any kind of like sadness, sometimes we'll sit really heavy. And you can feel that as kind of a weight on your chest. Sometimes I notice that my nervous energy, like small, a anxiety, not big a diagnosable anxiety, but just my nervous anxiety kind of generates jitters through my, um, extremities, especially my arms and all of a sudden I'll notice my hands are, are clenching and releasing and clenching and releasing. So when you notice what your body is doing in response to that feeling, that's that vibration going through? So like I said, the second line is the thought line that's happening in the brain. Those are the sentences. And then the feeling happens throughout the body. as that vibration travels. So the next line is the a line or actions. This is what we do or don't do. So procrastination can go here as well as all of our active behaviors. So everything from eating, yelling, cooking, exercising, watching TV, all the things that we do with our bodies. Those are our behaviors. Those go in the AA line. And all of the things that we don't do, like sit on the couch, don't get out of bed. or avoidance things, tasks that we're doing to avoid other tasks. All of that goes in the line. And the last line is the result line. That's our, our line. And it's just what it sounds like. What is the end result? What happens in our lives due to these thoughts, feelings, and actions. Often the result line gets kind of mixed up with the action line. And I know there are some coaches that actually lump these two together. But when you separate them out, if you can, you'll notice that the result is tied back to the thought line. They are always connected. Most of the time we believe that our results have to do with our circumstances. But this just gives away our power and removes our brains from the equation. So you are actually totally in charge. Of your results based on your thoughts. So again, if you want more on the model, definitely go way back and listen to episode four. I know an apple podcast. You can sort episodes by like oldest first. That's the easiest way to find that episode for cause then it'll just be a few, just one little page down. So I've done episodes on thoughts specifically like episode 25 as positive thinking versus intentional thinking where we really get into that T line. Helping you think in ways that will change your results? And I'm also done an episode specifically on the AA line for weight loss, where I discuss action or alien things that you can do to help you lose weight. But today we're going to hone in on that F line and see what's happening there. And how that F line can drive the a line. And how we can mostly be more in tune with that F line. Because as much as, as coaches, we like to say your thoughts, create your feelings. Your feelings, drive your actions. So as always, I'm going to use weight loss, examples in, in the model. but like I said, at the beginning, you can use the model and this feelings work for really anything that's going on in your life. And I will say I never finished coaching a client like through their 12 sessions with me and not coach on something else. Meaning something aside from weight loss. I have coached on dating and parenting and not yelling at kids. I have coached on adult children, parenting, you know, where the child is becoming an adult, not Stricky. We've talked about relationships with spouses. I've coached on sex. I've coached on support of spouses with their weight loss. Um, I've coached on moms and those relationships. So the model is a very, very useful tool. So even though I am giving examples of weight loss, you can apply this to whatever you are going through. So. When we see overeating in the, a line. In the actual line, there's a lot of variability of what I see in the F line. What feelings are driving that. Overeating. Sometimes it's merely desire or urge. This is what we call a craving overall. When we lump the thought and feeling together, you're thinking, Ooh, that bag of peppermint, Hershey, kisses sound really good. And we hardly ever get those because they only come out at Christmas time. And then the feeling is desire. And it feels like a strong pull toward the bag and it's urgent. And then in that action line, you grab the bag and sit down on the couch to watch a show and eat the Hershey kisses. Sometimes though it's an entirely different feeling. It's boredom, sadness, loneliness. And we end up overeating in the F line. In response to those types of feelings. And when I say overeating, I'm just talking about eating beyond physical fullness. So whether that's seconds or thirds at mealtime, or that's grabbing snacks in between meals or eating sweets and treats after dinner, when you aren't physically hungry. All of that is overeating. So sometimes we have a feeling like loneliness and our lower brains kick into high gear and say, whoa, this has got to be fixed. This feeling is not our baseline. And so something has gone wrong and let's fix that. And obviously you're not hearing these sentences cause this is your lower brain kind of on autopilot there. It looks back in the catalog of memories and sees that many, many times over the years. Starting with when we fell and got hurt as a toddler. And we were sad that food actually fixes this feeling. And so it offers up this idea that you could finish off that bag of chips in the pantry, and that would solve the problem. And this happens very fast and very unconsciously, by the way, like the searching and the memory banks. Obviously we are not doing that on purpose. And so the next thing we know, we're standing in front of the pantry, looking our fingers from the drags of that chip bag. We just finished off. And searching for something else as well. And all this has done in the blink of an eye. And if I asked you later, what were you feeling in that moment? You would most likely not be able to identify it. You'll tell me. Well, it just sounded good or. I'm not sure. I just wanted a snack. And here's where it gets really important to start identifying those other feelings because it's true. Like I said, from the first example, Sometimes it is like what I call just quotes. Just desire. Sometimes it is just a craving. But if there is something else going on, If there are other feelings driving this over, eating. We really, really need to identify those and start to feel those feelings better. Here's the takeaway. Overeating problems are actually under feeling problems. Let me repeat that. Overeating problems are actually under feeling problems. And what I mean by under feeling is we are not bothering to feel our emotions or feel our feelings. And instead we are using food to just cover up what is happening there. Many many times we just ignore things and we simply do not pay attention to them. And so we report to your coach to me that you don't know what was driving that action. We choose little snacks instead of feeling the emotions. Instead of interrupting ourselves. on not walking to the pantry and asking what's going on here. We just eat the snack because it works. Little snacks, fill the vibrations, those emotional vibrations that seem to cause little cracks in our system. The food fills those up. One of my favorite quotes on this is from Shonda Rhimes in her book year. Yes, I highly recommend it. I actually read it several years ago and this quote has never left my brain. Although I did look up the exact wording so I could read it to you. She said don't ever let anyone tell you that food doesn't work. Anyone who tells you that food doesn't work is either stupid or a liar, or has never had food before? You can tell them. I said, so it works putting food on top of it works. If food did not work, if it didn't work, it's slutty. more is more magic. Everyone in America. I would be Angelina Jolie fin. No one would drive through no one would sprinkles or pink Berry or any of it. I think she's so funny, but it's just so true the way she says it. This is seriously though, Uh, revelation to my clients. When I tell them this. We do this. We eat in response to our feelings. Because food works. And that's okay. Like, it's just good to know. Right? Food works. But when we learn how to feel better and I mean, the verb feel right. Feel our feelings and notice them and be with them. Not only will you be more in tune in that you will end up feeling better. Right. It's kind of confusing the English language because we're using the same word for two different things. But your emotional state is going to get better and your body will feel better too, because you won't be overfilling it and requiring it to deal with all that excess food. It's got to figure out a place to store. Shonda also says this. The food created a nice top coat. It helped to smooth down the ragged bits sealed off the parts of me that were broken. It filled in all the holes covered up the cracks. Yep. I just put some food on top of any and everything that bothered me, the food just spackled right on in there. And Presto. Underneath the food, everything inside me was smooth and cold. And numb. I was dead inside and that was good. That's the end of her quote she's if you're not familiar with this book, this is a year that she spent saying yes to everything in her life. And she ended up kind of focusing on. A different topic each month that she was going to be saying yes to, and this is the month that she said yes to her body. And she started to really examine what was going on with her relationship with food and how it was affecting her body and how she was feeling and her health. And so this is how she kind of came to realize. And when she started to say yes to her body, then that's when she got really clear with her relationship with food. So it's really fascinating, even if you just. Just read that chapter, but again, I highly recommend the whole book. But I just love this metaphor. The more we use food to spackle in the cracks. The less, we are able to feel our emotions. When we, we can start doing this is to identify how we are feeling throughout the day and identifying our emotions. So recently I heard on the Huberman lab podcast, he discussed a study of non depressed individuals. There was also a study. He referenced of depressed individuals that this was also effective for, but he was all, there was this study. On non-depressed individuals and it cued them to touch into their emotions multiple times per day. I kind of wanted to quote him here cause I was like listening to the podcast and writing it down, but it's a little hard to quote his podcast because he talks in such a conversational tone. So I'm just going to give you kind of the gist of what he was saying. He was saying the key takeaways from this study. Are very important for us to know which is, first of all, the more often you can ask yourself, what am I really feeling right now? How do I feel. And the critical part is to force yourself to not use broad labels or simple valence labels and a valence label is good or okay. Or bad. And so you have to understand that emotions when you're talking about emotions, good is not an emotion. Bad is not an emotion, but instead you need to be saying things like, oh, I feel curious, but also a little apprehensive, if that happens to be the case or, I'm fEeling a little bored, but in also anticipation of what's going to happen tomorrow. So really specific, he says, putting more nuance and specificity on your emotions but also touching into, or thinking about your own emotional states more times per day clearly has positive outcomes for mood and mental health. And that was kind of the broad takeaway from this study that thinking about your emotions has positive incomes on your overall mental health. So this should happen in. Uh, according to this study, you want to try to aim to do this anywhere from three to six times per day and all you're doing here is asking yourself, how do I feel right now? This helps us better understand the negative emotions that are coming, which might sound like a bad thing. Like, oh, great. I have to pay attention to every negative emotion I have all day. But. Those negative emotions have information in them, right. Because when we're feeling them, we can also check back and for example, go back up the model and think, what, what am I thinking right now? That's leading to this emotional state where I'm feeling some sort of negative way. This is one thing that's often lost in those broad categorizations of sad or down or bad. So the data from this study shows that the more nuance and the term they give here is emotional. granularity. So that's the actual term. So the more emotional granularity we have, the richer, our experience is of the positive aspects of life. And the more effectively we can navigate the negative. Aspects of life. So, this is a very, very simple way to start feeling our feelings better. Right. We can put an alarm on our phones or perhaps you can have a cue. Like every time I get up to use the bathroom. I am going to check in with how I feel, or if you live or work in a building with an elevator, you can say, every time I push the button for an elevator, I'm going to check in and ask myself, how do I feel right now? And using those emotionally granular terms, very specific terms. Give your emotions or feelings, some words. So, again, we're not looking for sad or good, but we're looking for things like perplexed. Anticipatory joyful, excited, apprehensive, curious, curious as one of my favorite emotions to feel. There are plenty of feelings, wheels, and charts, et cetera. You can Google that kind of thing, but I'll give you mine that I use. Um, just look in the show notes and I'll provide that as a free download for you. Reading over these types of feelings, wheels can really help direct your brain to times that you felt these ways. Or you can even just imagine what would cause you to feel these ways and get these words as more, a part of your vocabulary. So you have access to them when you do this small check-in. So using this tool, then this check-in tool, we're going to be more aware of our feelings throughout the day. And then perhaps we can also check in before eating something occasionally. You may even want to print out the feelings wheel chart and put it on the interior side of your pantry door. If you notice that snacking between meals or late at night. Seems to be holding back your weight loss. Then you might want to check in with your feelings prior to grabbing something. And take a look at that. What, what am I feeling what's going on for me? Make sure you aren't trying to spackle some food on top of a negative feeling. Now as I always say, when I'm talking about overeating, I'm not talking about doing this when you're physically hungry. Fear like, oh, stopping work. I'm physically hungry. It's time for lunch. I'm going to go down and get some lunch. That's not the time. I mean, you certainly can, is certainly Canon in order to like, do this exercise. If that makes sense to you as one of your three to six times a day, uh, to check in with how you're feeling. But we aren't trained to not eat meals, right. As always the goal of weight loss is not to try to eat as little as possible, but it's to try to eat. A little bit less than when we are eating in order to use some of those onboard fat stores to actually burn some of that and lose weight. So, like I said, Over eating problems are actually under feeling. Problems. And this is the verb of feel. So the truth is that this might be enough. Just this one tool I wanted to keep this episode really simple. Just this one concept of understanding that food works. We do use food to Sue the motions. And then improving our emotional state, improving our emotional granularity by checking in with ourselves three to six times a day and really asking. What we are feeling. This might be enough once you get more aware of your actual feelings and stop trying to just fix an Uncomfortable vibration with food. You might find that's enough for you to stop eating when you aren't physically hungry. If it's not, and you still find yourself overeating to soothe emotions. That's where coaching comes in. So tap on my scheduling link and the show notes, get a free session scheduled with me. Let me help you figure out what's really going on for you. I can ask more questions when we're one-on-one and really help you dive into what is going on. What's driving the overeating and possibly working on some thought patterns that are leading to those emotions as well that, I could help you with. I've got one spot left for one-on-one coaching. And then if you miss that spot, you'll either go on my wait list. Or I'm going to be launching a group program here very soon. Those details will be forthcoming, but if you are. Interested in getting on the wait list for that, that link also is in the show notes. I know I've directed you to a lot of links in the show notes. You're definitely going to want to check those out. Um, my scheduling link, the feelings wheel will be there as well as, like I said, that waitlist for the group program. As always. Thanks for listening to the eat. Well think, well live well podcast. I hope you're having a beautiful holiday season and lovely December. And I'll talk to you very soon on your free session.