Is Your Environment Triggering You To Binge?

For a very long time...

I used to describe myself as ‘organized chaos’.   In my mind that meant I managed to keep things together for the most part, but in actuality, I believed I was a disorganized person and was completely disorganized in my life. Both mentally and in my physical space. Essentially, thinking of myself this way, I had dubbed myself a hot mess is wolf's clothing.  It was my subtle way of shaming and judging myself and it never, ever felt good.  I felt like a fraud and a liar, on a subconscious level.  If only people really saw how unorganized I really was?!  The horror!  Really, though, that being said, my environment always felt overwhelming and as a result, I always felt overwhelmed and underwhelmed with my results in life.  Paperwork and bills everywhere, dishes in the sink, a mental to-do list that kept me up at night, laundry that I was always behind on and left in the laundry basket (to be fair, I still struggle with this one), follow up phone calls, confusion about what to eat during meal times, constantly getting ‘confused’ about day to day tasks and never feeling caught up.  Now, as I’ve transformed my relationship with myself, especially in the last few years, I’ve really embraced structure, organization and cleanliness, thankfully, but one thing I have grown to realize is that self proclaimed ‘cute’ name I had given myself, not only kept me stuck, but it also stressed me the heck out.  Like, big time!  That limiting belief was NOT helpful.  And, that stress manifested in eating, overeating, eating when not hungry and the worst, binging episodes.  When my environment felt overwhelming, my brain felt overwhelmed, and my feelings of stress kicked in and I needed to soothe.  Soothe with food!  

The simple truth is if our environment is messy, our brains feel messy, and oftentimes this evokes sloppy decision making aka ‘binging’.  If we can get clean and clear first in our minds' eyes with intentional decision making and planning, we can make it that much easier for us to navigate our urges to not eat when not actually hungry, and use the stress as a tool to get organized.  One way to tackle this is to simply replace the habit of eating when we feel triggered by our chaotic environment.  To do so, the first thing to do is to create awareness, then pause, and then instead of eating, clean, organize, or plan ONE thing.  Nothing big.  One small task.  Maybe it’s doing the dishes, organizing your desk, scheduling your week, taking the trash out and sweeping, making a shopping list for the week and planning dinner, etc.  Putting that energy of the urge to eat towards something actually productive not only feels good and satisfying, but it will help you get away from the triggers of overeating when not actually hungry and help you navigate those urges to stress eat, and avoid them altogether.  

I know you may be thinking, but eating is SO much more pleasurable!  Hands down, I’d agree! At the moment, yes, but what I’ve come to find is, true joy comes from creating value in our lives.  If the impact of our actions is one that is a net negative 0% vs.a net negative 100%, choose the net negative 0% for real joy ( meaning there is no negative impact from said action-organizing 0%, only positive impact here, vs overeating which has a net negative impact of say 100%.)  I’d argue, there are no pros to overeating, especially because we don’t have to hunt and gather food like our ancestors and food is readily available in abundance.  It feels good to overeat in the moment, but then generally feels terrible later, so doing something that rewards you long term, like organizing your space, will ultimately bring you more joy, more peace, and a home you can feel good and empowered in.

I’d love to know your thoughts on this!  Reply to this email and let me know if this resonated with you and/or how getting organized has impacted your life.

XX,

Monique