EP. 48- Your strongest food cravings & urges- THE STEPS: my personal 3 step process.

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Happy Tuesday! If you’re a regular, right on time for the episode on Monday, you probably noticed that there was no episode Monday but let me explain!

I went to a wedding this weekend, in Mexico. It was a beautiful, all-white wedding. I loved my outfit; I wore a tight, short dress and I wore it with boots (of course, my favorite!). I was proud of myself because of I typically record on Friday, hit publish on Sunday and you can hear it in your earbuds on Monday. We left on Wednesday for this wedding. My husband was a groomsman, and it was a four-day event. To prepare, I recorded it the Monday prior. Even my podcast editor was confused. Come Sunday; I get an email that the file has been corrupted for some reason. In the past, I would have panicked, but instead, I realized that I had prepared, I had done my best to set everything up in advance, and it was just what had happened. The result I had wanted to create was to have a podcast for you, ready every Monday, to help with YOUR results. But plans don’t always go perfectly, and that’s ok. You can decide that’s part of the process. There are little hiccups here and there that just don’t work. I was on vacation, and it’s out of my control!

Although this wasn’t launched on Monday on planned and Tuesday instead and that’s ok. There’s this expectation we hold for ourselves for having to be perfect and when things aren’t perfect, we can be hard on ourselves, especially when you have patterns of being an emotional eater. What if…here and there, B+ stuff is ok sometimes because you’re showing up and getting it done. Let this be a new fresh perspective for you. Just keep showing up. Just the way you do things will not always be an A and give your best and not expect things will not turn out perfectly will help you moving forward towards an overall result you’re pursuing.

For today’s topic, I want to talk to you about your strongest urges, desires and food cravings. I want to share with you the number 1 strategy I use when I talk to clients to use at the moment when you are having your strongest urge, desire, and craving for something that keeps you off plan. You KNOW what to do to get the results you want to get, but you get that urge for that chocolate, ranch, beer, wine, whatever it is for you. I can relate. I can think back to a time when it felt like the one thing I wanted the most in the world was not to eat and lose weight but the thing I wanted the most was to go to the pantry and eat everything. I have several moments of desperation when I didn’t trust myself with these cravings because they would always end in a binge. I have a clear memory of myself standing in the pantry with the door almost closed. I had a can of cheese whiz and Ritz crackers. I felt completely out of control. The food was in power. It was so frustrating! I remember taking out a stack of Ritz crackers and throwing it in the trash so that I wouldn’t eat it. Willpower is to create the desire for the food continually and yet also telling yourself you can’t have it. It’s not sustainable. My urge was so intense that I took all of the crackers out of the trash can to eat them. My urgent desire for those crackers felt so strong that I was eating food out of the trash can. I used to feel so much shame about this, but now I share it because I learned so much from this. I also get so many emails from listeners who relate to these stories and are so happy that someone CAN get over these challenges. It’s just something that happened, and I learned from it.

I want you to have a tool to break this and manage this desire – this urgent desire that is so strong that it drove me to pull out Ritz crackers out of the trash and actually eat them.

I understand how strong an urge can feel, how frustrating and overwhelming and outside of your control it can feel. So how do you retrain that? How do you unlearn that? There’s a specific tool I will teach out. I used this tool for managing my desires.

The tool I’m going to teach you: the 30-minute Paz. There are three steps to it. You will notice when you have an urge. Consider what the things that keep you off track are? You already know what you should be eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner and your snacks. Veggies, proteins, healthy fat. You have your joy eat, and you use the hunger scale for each meal to eat to a #3-4 on the hunger scale. (p.s. If you’re new, go back to the early episodes where I break down these basic tools and strategies down). If you’re eating off plan because these choices are being fueled by desire.

I spell the 30-minute Paz because it’s Spanish for peace. It’s about ditching the struggle and endless battle with food. It’s also an acronym, and I will break it down.

P: Pause for 30 and peak at your brain

A: Allow the desire and assess

Z: Zone in on your goal and zig zag to a new thought, feeling, action or result

P: Pause for 30 and peak at your brain

The 30-minute Paz is a pattern interrupt. Look at the clock and create the space to interrupt your typical pattern to learn something different. During an urge, you’re feeling the feeling and responding to it. You have a craving for ice cream, and you’re responding to it. The next option is to let the feeling exist. You don’t try to resist it – because that’s willpower. Instead, you allow the desire to be there. When you take this approach, that struggle feeling does dissipate. You will be able to manage your desires, urges, and cravings and it won’t feel like a struggle. It will feel like you allow that desire. You don’t respond to it immediately, and you unlearn that habit of indulging your urges. Pause for 30 and peak at your brain. Get curious about what’s going on in your mind and try to understand why you have a craving or a particular urge at that moment, or what might be causing it.

A: Allow for the desire and assess and acknowledge your feelings.

Allow the desire. Instead of just reacting, resisting or responding, you allow you are feeling to be there. You assess and acknowledge your feelings. Take assessment: What am I feeling in this moment? What will happen if you just allow this feeling to be there? Allow this desire to be there because it’s just a feeling.

Z: Zone in on your goal and zig zag to a new thought, feeling, action or result

Zone in on your goal. Why is making a different choice important to you? Remind yourself, what’s important to you? Creating the life you want to create? Inner peace about food or my weight? Ending the struggle with my weight? Looking super hot in my bathing suit? Whatever it is, zone in on your goal and the reasons why it’s important to you and zig zag to focus on a new thought, feeling, action or result. Instead of feeling stressed or overwhelmed, you feel confident and move along with your day.

The 30-minute Paz is one of my secret tools (I’m telling you) to unlearn the habit we have of just responding to an urge or a desire by eating whatever we’re craving. This is not about losing the weight; it’s about ending the struggle. The internal and external result. Feeling deprived is not sustainable, and once you reach your goal, you will likely regain it and maintain the same habits that will make you gain the weight back.

This, I promise, will change everything for you but you really have to make the commitment and promise to yourself that you will create this 30-minute space of inviting in desire but not reacting to it.

Now is this the most comfortable thing to do? Not always and, not typically. Is this what you’re used to doing, no. We get a craving, and we respond it. Just because an urge is there doesn’t mean you have to listen to it and take its orders. Listen and let your feelings be there. By listening, allowing yourself to intellectually process it and honor your commitment. The next time you have an urge, look at the clock, and you will NOT eat the thing you desire until you’ve dedicated 30 minutes to this process. This process is not deprivation. Allowing the desire. Not controlling it but managing it, redirecting it and shifting your thoughts to feelings and actions that will get you to the goal you want. Think and act in ways that serve you rather than sabotage you.

For those urges and desires that feels unmanageable and rules and runs your life, it really IS possible to unlearn that and learn something new. The 30-minute Paz is the way to change that and doesn’t leave you deprived and hating your life. You’re unlearning what isn’t working and learning something that will. It’s not about restricting, willpower or just holding back from not eating foods you want. It’s about pausing but not responding or reacting. It’s about creating the space to make a diagnosis and make an assessment if what’s driving your current actions and results and choosing something different.

For this week, I want you to make this commitment now. For this entire week, anytime you have an urge or craving, no matter how strong, allow desire and urges to exist and don’t respond to it immediately. You will be fine, and your life will be better once you create this Paz. This Paz is just as much about getting external results and changing your internal results to that’s sustainable and just feels right. You will learn to manage your desire on purpose. At the end of the 30 minutes, you can make a decision that’s well informed and not impulsive. You can understand your feelings and what’s really going on.

If you have any specific questions about the Paz, send me a question at brenda@brendalomeli.com. I’m more than happy to answer your questions, and it’s a priority in my life to support you in your goals!

Remember, you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to show up consistently. That’s what gets results.

Have an amazing week. Keep showing up consistently and implement this 30-second Paz.

XOXO
Brenda

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