Welcome to the Nutrition Burnout podcast, your home for food and body obsession. I'm your host, Christi Brown, founder and creator of Intuitively Strong.
Hey. Hey. Welcome, my friends. I am sitting here kind of in the dark. I don't know why the light was shining in my office, and all of a sudden, I'm like, it's dark now, and I don't know, it kind of feels good. So I'm going to keep it. It's like I'm in this dungeon telling you all my secrets, my stories of life. But, hey, I consider you a friend. So thanks for being here. All right, so we have, uh, such a great episode today. I was talking to one of my clients, and she is at the beginning stages of her journey. She's at week three. She has made some incredible breakthroughs, and she actually brought this topic to my intention. And crazy enough, in my master's Academy, where my advanced clients go, we actually are working on a body image audit, is what I call it. So we actually take an audit of our current body image and through specific questions. So between those two Kismet things that lined up, uh, I was like, I have to do a podcast episode on this because you're likely needing this and feeling this way as well. I'm going to ask you a couple of the questions that I ask them because they're pretty deep and not just like, oh, do you like yourself? And, oh, Mickey Mouse bullshit questions that everybody asks, like, oh, love yourself. I always hated that stuff. Don't give me that. Give me the deep stuff, because that's what I crave. I have such deep connections. Don't just talk to me about the weather. Talk to me about your hopes and your dreams. Like, what keeps you up at night? That's what I want to hear about. So let's, um, get started, because I'm really excited to talk about this because my very courageous client, who is at week three right now, just came back from a wedding, and she was like, you know, just had a lot of pressure with how my body should look and just needing it to be perfect. And I'm crazy enough, too, in my group training have a client who's in College now, too, and she's just like, wow, it's amazing how much I just feel like I always need to be the prettiest to look, the prettiest to be somebody in this place. And it's so true. And I think we all feel that on a level, not just people in College, because I grown as a woman with kids, but I think we feel it, too. I think as women, we just feel this natural urge to be desirable and to look good. And, um, I really think it stems from a long line of our parents and their parents and their grandparents and everybody down before us where women weren't as bad as. As we are today. We've definitely grown to this level of, um, just being who we are and accepting our faults. And it's still definitely that time where we feel like we have to be perfect as well. I'm not sure it will ever go away in our brain, but we can definitely make that monster smaller. We can put the spotlight and the focus in our brains on something else other than needing to be perfect all the time. But this led me to this entire podcast episode, which is why perfectionist people pleasers and overachievers make the best binge eaters and Hoo Dongie. That is a loaded title. There a loaded episode. And we're here to unpack that. When I first kind of started thinking about intuitive eating and hearing about it, I was like, man, that shit is for people giving up on themselves. Come on, you're really not going to focus on your health. Come on, what's going on? You can do this. As I was getting up at 430 a. M. And getting in a workout and going to work after that, then coming home and taking care of the kids and baths and dinners and all that and then putting them to bed and just my life was just revolving around the gym and it was revolving around my macros and making sure I could fit those pancakes that I had into my day and making sure that OK. Well, that means I got to have egg whites and chicken for dinner then, because I can't calorically afford anything else. So my mind was completely obsessed with just food and what to eat and how to eat. And now that I look back and of course, hindsight is always 2020, right? But now that I look back at it, I think to myself, I'm like, man, where did this desire, this need for perfection of my body come from? And it's something that we all carry. I believe to a certain extent, some of us carry it less than others and others. If you're listening to this podcast, you're likely like me on a level to where we just feel like it's our identity. We feel like looking a certain way or, um, making sure that our body shape is a certain way is everything to us to where it's not even about the health anymore. If we dig down deep now, it's just about when we really go to that core that we never wanted to go to. We always covered it up with, oh, I'm just being healthy. Oh, I'm just trying this really hardcore thing, and I'm just so used to competition that I really want to try it and I'm going to do it and I'm going to pass the flying colors because I always do. But in my heart of hearts, I was needing to be accepted by you. I was needing those people walking down the street to just be like, wow, she's buff. Wow, she has two kids. No way. I thrived. I lived off of that that was my fuel. And whenever I didn't get it, I was like, okay, I need more. Give me more, give me more. How do I get more? So ever since I really started on this journey and really started to focus on mental health as one of the doorways into health in general, I started opening up my life. I started opening up my life in the mental health world and realizing that, wow, a lot of the things that I did were not for myself. They were for other people, and a lot of other things that I did or what I explained to my clients as magic tricks. Look over here at all of this that I achieved. So you don't see all of my faults and everything I'm bad at over here. And I think it comes down to for me. Anyway, I'm just telling you my story because this could be totally different for you. But if you can relate to this, definitely let me know. But I always thought that the more that I achieved, the more I would be accepted, the more I would become an asset, the more that I would feel powerful. And I was like, okay, well, once I get to this place, once I get to X amount of weight, then I'll be happy. And then I got there, and then I was like, okay. But now once I get to this place, then I'll really be happy. And then got to a miserable, um, underweight place to where I was just dying inside and not living my life at all. And then I kind of go back to that and think, who was I living my life for? Like, why was I so obsessed with that number on the scale, that arbitrary number that we all have? You know, when I say that number on the scale, your head instantly went to that number. That's the number I'm talking about. And I want to break that down into what that number really means to us and to why we're so dead set on that number. And likely, that number is a number that we've had like mine has since high school. For me, going back to that, it would mean going back to eating disorders. That would absolutely 100% mean that. It doesn't mean because I'm unhealthy. It means because I'm aging, and age is something we should be proud of. It's a privilege denied to many. So as we talk about getting older, our bodies change. This is hello, six grade sex Ed class right here. But our bodies are changing as we're getting older, too. We were in probably peak physical condition in our 20s. And then if you've been obsessed with food in your body, you've likely went into a place where you had to look or be a certain way. And we're still chasing that number. We're always chasing that number. And a lot of times, that number gets us away from true health that number takes us away from actually being healthy, from either social health or physical health or mental health, because we're too tired to go work out. Or even if we do work out when we're underfed and overworked, then our body is actually lowering its metabolism because it's not able to keep up. And at one point, if you've had missing periods or H a, you understand, um, that's vital sign that your body is slowly shutting down because it's trying to conserve energy and keep you alive and blood flowing and you blinking, um, and by keeping your heart beating and your lungs working so it can get really, really bad to that place. So I am a huge nerd when it comes to mental health. Like, I love sports psychology, I love neuroscience. I love all of that. I always want to know, well, why am I feeling like this? And sometimes it took me a while to realize sometimes you just feel the way you feel because you do and there's nothing wrong with you, but you're fine. But when you look into perfectionists, when you look into people, pleasers, when you look into overachievers a lot of times it came to us from a very young age. And I actually want you to think about this yourself. What's the first thought that pops into your head when I ask you, what's the first memory you have of you needing to be perfect, of you needing to achieve, achieve, achieve, to make someone happy? When was that first memory? And for me, it was when I was playing sports. I think I said this in another podcast, but my brother was the funny one. He was the one who like the charmer. We called him the Governor because he was just hilarious and everything to everyone. And for me to stand out or to be noticed, I didn't have quite his personality, but I'm still very outgoing. But I had to be the smart one. I had to be the one who achieved, who got the trophies, who got the straight A's and did everything like that. And I was very hard on myself because to me, I thought if I'm not hard on myself, then it looks like I'm not trying. And I think a lot of people feel this way with weight too, no matter where you are on the scale, if you, heaven forbid somebody sees you eating a cheeseburger and you're just like, you feel like you have to almost explain yourself, well, I'm only eating this now. I don't usually do this, but we kind of feel like we have to explain why we're doing it or, oh, don't worry, I'm going on another diet on Monday. Don't worry. This is my last time I'm doing this. And we feel like we have to explain why we're eating off plan or eating bad foods. And that almost is that magic trick. Look over here so you don't see what I'm doing over here. So I really want you to think about that first memory that you have, because that has shaped you, that has shaped you into the person you are today. And, yeah, I'm going to say my brother and I have the best parents in the world. They're incredible people. But I was always looking to achieve, achieve, achieve. That's how I thought I could make my, uh, parents happy. And as a kid, you're so just not in tune with your mental health quite yet. Or at least back when I was growing up, mental health wasn't a thing back then. It was always just push harder, try harder. Do your best. Um, and your best should definitely be better than everyone else's. At least that's how I took it. And I could have just took it as my way of this is my way of standing out. This is my way of being somebody in this world, because how are people going to recognize me or acknowledge me if I wasn't great at something? And for me, it was very much so. If I'm trying to be somebody in this world, then I have to be the best somebody there ever was. And since I didn't have a thing, I had to be good at everything. My brother was naturally smart, naturally great at athletics. And I had to work my ass off to get A's to get straight as, work my ass off. Nothing ever came easy to me. Even when I was studying, I had such a hard time remembering things. I had Add and didn't know it because I was diagnosed late in life with it. So it was so hard for me to understand and retain information. And even with athletic technique, I'm an athletic person. But nothing ever came easy for me or naturally. And this is why it's both a blessing and a curse, because most of us perfectionists have this incredible tenacity and perseverance within us, this dedication. Like, if you were to tell me to do something radical, uh, I would do it, and I would have to be the best at it. Even in, um, tennis practice, our coach would have us do these AB exercises. And the person who could stay the longest didn't have to run sprints. He'd have us lay down on the courts and on our backs. And you'd have to keep your hands, your butt, your head on the ground, uh, but lift up your feet. So it was an AB exercise. And I remember holding out for, like, six minutes one time because I didn't want to be the last one. And I wanted to win. I just naturally always wanted to win, because to me, that made me valuable. That made me a good person. And so where that kind of stuck, that kind of was my thing. My shtick. Now that was who I was. I was the person who would have to beat you. And if I didn't, I got really upset. I got really mad about it because I had to be number one in that sense. It's instilled within me that work ethic, that hardworking, dedicated, um, go hard, no days off. It's just instilled within me. It's the only way I really know how to work. So walking into this journey of balance was absolute hell for me. I can eat this cookie but I only eat half. Like, are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. Either eat the whole thing or don't have it at all. You know, for me I was so all or nothing. And a lot of us perfectionists are it's either we are either going to be all or nothing, we're going to go all in or we are going to be all out and start again tomorrow. And this is where that binge eating comes in. This is where we as perfectionist people pleasers over achievers, reach that big bad Wolf of burnout. Um, we reach burnout and we just completely exhaust ourselves. And the longer we do something, it actually can worsen it in a way. So as I was going year after year after year counting macros and making my body into this perfect shape, I thought it was for health. I told everybody it was for health. But really it was because I felt like I couldn't lose that now. Now it was shame, it was guilt, it was this, well what's going to happen if I lose it? People are going to think I gave up on myself. People are going to think that I'm not trying hard enough. So now I have to keep it. And that's what a lot of us. Then we turn to people pleasing that perfectionist turns to overachieving mode where we have to be good at everything. And then the overachieving turns into people pleasing to where now I'm more concerned about your comfort over my health and it has nothing to do with you. You could be like, Christie, I don't care how you live, just be you. But I'm like, no, you're definitely going to talk about me behind my back. I can't do this. I'm like trying to run away from that pain that hasn't even happened yet. So in my brain it was always, what are they thinking about? Me. Every time I stood up it was fucking your stomach, Christie. Duh. Make sure you have that flat stomach. Don't let the rolls show that's bad. And thinking about that, it was just exhausting all the time. So that overachieving that turned into perfectionism, that turned into people pleasing. Led me down this path of just absolutely self destructing with my health. Making sure that I had the perfect food to eat, packed, ready to go. It probably took me a solid three to 4 hours to go grocery shopping each Sunday to prep my food, to pack it into very particular wait out certain meals. And then I would carefully eat it throughout the week, making sure nobody took anything from it. And by Thursday, I was just done eating chicken and broccoli out of there. I was like, I cannot do this anymore. And then I was completely burnt out. And then I would push for one more day, and all of a sudden, the weekends were just my binge weekends. And then it became a thing to where I would just burn out. You just start burning out quicker and quicker and quicker. And then it turned not just to weekends, but Fridays and then the weekends and then Thursday nights. It's like, well, it's almost Friday, and that's usually when I start. So I'm just going to binge again. And then it was always that guilt, that shame just, okay, uh, it's not going to happen again next week. I'm really going to stick to it. I'm really going to stick to it this time. And then Monday would roll around, and I would eat like a Saint during the weekdays, and then the weekends would just be total binge Fest. Total binge Fest. And I would almost, like, start planning my binges and start looking forward to them, like, saving Pop Tarts, that this is the last one, and I'm not going to be able to get any more. So I would hide it, and I would, like, stash things away from my binges. And then I would be so embarrassed by them that I would have to hide the wrappers underneath the trash and the trash can because I'm perfect. You can't see me not being perfect. And then I would try and be like, oh, whoops. I had, like, a bite of a Pop Tart on my social media, my Instagram. Oh, I'm so bad trying to again, the magic trick. Look over here. So you don't see the fact that I ate that entire box of Pop Tarts over there. So it was really tough. And I was reading Renee Brown's new book, this actually today, and she said this quote in it that hit me so freaking hard, because if this doesn't talk about perfections, people, believers overachievers. And like, Benji's, um, I'm like, Good Lord, woman, this is right here. So I'm going to read this part to you, because this just hit me like nothing else. She says the eggshells were never on the ground. They were duct taped to the soles of my shoes. I could never step lightly enough or run fast enough to get away from the cracking. So I made everything around me so loud that it drowned out the sound. It's really awful that the same substances that take the edge off of anxiety, aka binge eating and pain, also dull our sense of observation. Um, we see the pain caused by the misuse of power. So we numb our pain and lose track of our own power. We become terrified of the feeling of pain, so we engage in behaviors that become a magnet for more pain. Aka binge eating numbing out with food. Emotional eating. We run from anger and grief, aka running on the treadmill to punish yourself for what you ate the night before, straight into the arms of fear, perfectionism, and the desperate need for control. When we stop numbing and start feeling and learning again, we have to reevaluate everything, especially how we choose loving ourselves over making other people comfortable. Taking the edge off is not rewarding, but putting it back on is one of the most rewarding things we can do for ourselves. Those sharp edges feel vulnerable, but they're the markers that let us know where we are, where we end and others begin. The more you use food and perfectionism to numb and avoid anxiety and vulnerability, the less you're going to understand your feelings, thoughts, and behaviors. Trying to outrun and outsmart vulnerability and pain is like living a life defined by suffering and exhaustion. Who do we that hit me hard. And you could really put that in place of anything, anything that you use as a crutch or anything that you use to numb out. Or even if it's your phone that you just constantly turn to your phone phone when really you're like, oh, my gosh, I should go outside with the kids. Been there, done that. Or if you're a College kid, you're like, I should be studying, but I'm going to watch TV instead. All these things we use to avoid and to numb out. So what's the answer here? The answer here is to begin setting those boundaries. The first thing you have to do is what I tell my clients. With emotional eating, we have to start understanding the difference between self care and self soothing. But in order to do this, you have to start becoming more selfaware. You have to start understanding why you're doing what you're doing. Okay. Like when we were talking back with health, how I thought over exhausting myself under feeding myself and overworking myself was for health, because I looked super healthy. But it was anything but healthy on the inside, right? I was doing it for the look. I was doing it for outside validation. And I could never admit that because, no, it's for health. It's for health. It's for health. But when we look inside, to me, that was a way to self soothe. In a very odd way, that was a way for me to be validated, because I couldn't validate myself, because I didn't know myself and I didn't like myself at that time. I thought that by being perfect, I could avoid the pain, that I could avoid the terrifying emotion of not feeling adequate enough of not being enough for people. And when my parents, my awesome parents kept telling me, Kristie, you can be anything. You can be anything. What I heard was, you have to be everything. That is one of my most favorite quotes from Courtney E. Martin from her book, um, Perfect Girl's, Starving Daughters, uh, which is an incredible resource, but this is something that is going to take work. You can't just listen to this podcast episode and be like, okay, cool, I'm fixed. Thanks, Christie. Bye. I mean, I wish it was the case I could wave a magic wand, but you as well as I know that that's not it. This is going to take consistent work and it's something that you're going to have to keep challenging those negative thoughts with. Because if there's one thing I know about perfectionists is that we hate being beginners, we hate messing up, we hate failure. We want an exact plan and we want it to go on autopilot. And to do this inner work is hell for us because it's like, oh, this is stupid, this is dumb. It's, uh, never going to work. I'm going to lose the weight first and then I'm going to heal my relationship with food. Or I'll work on this self care bullshit a little bit later because I've really got to lose £10. Um, or I've really got to get down a dress size first because this is just unacceptable. And then we get in this zone to where we don't want to become those beginners again. We don't want to go back to something that we know nothing about or something that we've lost for so long. So that's where we get tied up is that we don't want to start at the beginning. And something that James Clear says that hit me really hard. He says the powerful combination is hating being bad at stuff. So hating being bad at something, plus willing to look like a beginner. That is a very powerful combination because people who hate being bad at stuff will improve. And as perfectionists, we have to understand that those very small steps forward, those very small progress markers are what's going to keep us going. Not the big transformations that everybody sees on social media that somebody lost £30 on keto in a month. It's very small things like, okay, instead of binge eating, I actually overeat, which is way better than binge eating. Instead of eating the entire sleeve of Oreos this week, I ate half that's a step forward. Those are the things we need to be looking for instead of the big ending transformations. Effort beats outcome every damn time. And that's hard for us. Perfectionist people pleasers and overachievers to understand because we want the outcome every single time. But even trying is a step forward. And it's funny that we chase perfectionism because it doesn't exist, which means we completely exhaust and burn ourselves out trying to get there. And if I'm being completely honest, perfectionism is a slow and painful self sabotaging death. The more that I lower those expectations. And I know that sounds like hell for you because the first time somebody told me that I was like, GTFO, man, GTFO, because that is giving up on myself. And that is the last thing that I do. I do not stand for that. To me, it's still to this day, I have to when I'm like, Christy, lower your expectations. I still get a little like, that just sounds so bad. But really, us perfectionists. When we're in drive, we're in drive. So even if we pull it back into like a neutral state, we're still going faster than most people. That's what you have to understand is that we are putting so many unrealistic high expectations on ourselves. How we should look, what we should wear, how our body shape should be, what we should eat, how much we should work out every single day, 2 hours a day, only eating clean foods, never eating chocolate ever again. All of these things, these expectations we're putting ourselves through, it's like putting this carrot on a stick in front of our heads and being like, okay, chase the carrot, get the carrot. And I got the carrot. A lot of us got the carrot at one point. And then we're like, this isn't the life I want to live because it is no life to live. And I've talked about this in my past podcast episodes, but just really talking about that cost of leanness that there is a cost to it. And each time you want to get leaner, that you're going to have to give up something that you love. So what we're really looking for here is what most of my clients are looking for is to tone down that perfectionism. Like, totally take, um, that bar down like a couple hundred pegs. And to just start where you're at. To say, I may be a beginner again. Like, I used to lift super heavy, and now I'm going back as a beginner. That sucks. Well, you know what? A lot of us start off as beginners at something, but that's the only way that you are going to move forward. So by saying I am where I am and I'm going to meet myself at that place, I'm not going to try and pretend like I should be further. I'm not going to try to do another bodybuilding show and achieve, achieve, achieve. Get all the swords, get all the trophies that I need because that really won't make me happy again. What will make me happy again is experiencing life. It's going out on those vacations and taking off my cover up so I can go swim in the pool. It's going on those vacations and wearing those colorful shorts because I freaking love them and not worrying about people walking behind me and walking sideways in front of people so they don't see the cellulite on my butt. So it's really about owning who I am, that I am imperfect. And it's okay to show it, because the more that I show my imperfections, the more it will allow others to show theirs. That's called being the permission slip. Something I encourage all of my clients to do is to be the permission flip. Be the one that takes the cover up off. Be the one that wears those awesome, like, bright yellow shorts or those yoga pants that are bright highlighter, um, Orange that. You know what? Yeah, you could see the cellulite through, but it really makes me feel good wearing these, right? Be the one that is doing all the things that your previous self wouldn't do. Walk into that world of I need to like myself first, because if I don't like myself, then nobody else can like me. There's no possible way. So that's where that perfectionism is going. To calm down. By setting those boundaries with yourself, by saying that I don't need to achieve to be loved. I just need to take care of myself. And I need to start focusing on what's important in my life, which is my health, which doesn't have to do with the scale, because health and the scale are not mutually exclusive. It's taking care of myself. Drinking enough water. Am I getting enough sleep? Am I eating enough food? Am I eating a variety of foods? Am I getting in some protein? Am I getting in some fruits and vegetables during the day? Am I moving my body? Start with those few things, right? Shoot for a handful of vegetables each day. That's it. Start there and then move up. Shoot for one walk a week, then move up. Okay. That's all you have to do for now. Move up until you found a place where it's good for you. We make this so complicated when it doesn't have to be. All right? So I really want you to start reframing your health. I want you to start thinking about what you see when you look at yourself. And I don't mean what you see. I see stomach. I see thighs. I see big arms. I see, um. Do you notice your smile? And are you thinking about how much you hate your body? Or are you thinking about all that your body did for you today? Are you thinking about all of the things that your body is capable of and that it has also been with you through 100% of your worst days? Don't forget that your body can hear every single thing that you think about it. How would that feel to have that awful roommate in your head saying, wow, you really look terrible today. You look really fat today. Wow, you're unacceptable. I can't believe you. I would hate that. I never want that roommate. Yet we subject that to ourselves because we think we deserve it. But when has the rating ourselves ever worked or ever made us do better? It hasn't. It only puts more perfectionism on us and on our bodies and, uh, what we think they should be based on what we thought they should be ten years ago. It's unrealistic to think that our body isn't going to change or that it has to stay at the same weight all the time. It's when we start beating ourselves down because we couldn't stick to that six day a week, hour long workout program every day. It's because you're not living your life. You're not experiencing your life. You're truly not happy because you've been riding this Yoyo diet roller coaster for so long that you're so comfortable failing here that you'd rather fail here. Because at least you know what that failure feels like. You don't want to try something new because it's too scary. You don't know what the outcome is going to be. At least if you go back to try Keto or whole 30 again, you know, oh, well, I've already failed there. So I'm just going to try it again and again and again. And this is where we come become burnt out by dieting. And I'm going to tell you where most people come and see me when they are at rock bottom and when they're like, Christie, I cannot go one more day without dieting. I just can't do it. I cannot do it. All right, my friends, all of my perfectionist people, pleasers and overachievers. I'm here to tell you that we can take that perfectionism and just tone it down a bit. We don't have to lose it. I think it's good that we have a drive. I think it's good that we have tenacity. I think it's great. We have dedication. But we don't need any more, um, of it. We really don't. We actually need to tone it down. It's kind of like what I tell my clients around food. The more we let go of that Kung Fu grip, the more control actually gets by letting go of control is when you actually start gaining it back. So if you're having trouble with this, I want you to click the link below. If you followed throughout this whole episode, you're going to understand and you're my people. And to tell you the truth, I want to help you build out, like, a, uh, six plan step. And yes, it does involve if you are considering, um, working with me to end binge eating and start to bridge that gap into more structured nutrition without deprivation, then that's what I'm here for as this episode is coming to an end. And if you found it helpful, it would mean the absolute world to me. If you could leave a five star review and subscribe. Because the more that you subscribe, the more that you leave five star reviews, the more it will reach people just like you to hear this message and also make sure you check out the show notes below because I have some awesome free resources, one of them being a 60 minutes free strategy call with me that will help you find and build out your blueprints to end binge eating along with my Sunday scaries weekly email series. You can't miss it. So my friend, that is all I have for you today. And until next time intuitively strong out.
