Are you feeling the holiday food frenzy creeping up already? You’re not alone. Today, we’re diving deep into those unhelpful thoughts that keep fueling the binge fire. I’ll share my own experiences with food scarcity and the back-and-forth battle of wanting holiday goodies while fearing them at the same time. We’ll explore how your thoughts around food aren’t the problem—it’s the thinking that follows. This episode is packed with mindset shifts to help you get ready for the holidays, whether you’re just starting your healing journey or ready to level up. If you’ve been trapped in the binge-restrict cycle year after year, this is your sign to start changing that now!

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HIGHLIGHTS

00:00 Tackling unhelpful thoughts around holiday foods

05:00 Understanding the difference between thoughts and thinking

12:30 How fear and anxiety around food stem from deeper issues

20:00 How to start shifting your thinking to change your behaviors

28:45 Why it’s important to start now, not wait until January 1st

RESOURCES + LINKS

⭐️ Starting October 9th, I’ll be offering free live group coaching every week in my Facebook group to support you through this journey. Don’t miss out!

Ryann: @itsryannnicole

Work with Ryann: BingeEatingUnchained.com

Join the IRN Community Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/itsryannnicole

Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional advice.

Transcript

You guys pumpkin spices everywhere. Fall drinks are back in the holidays. They’re coming in hot. So after my excitement about my favorite pumpkin covered Jojo’s being back at Trader Joe’s, I asked you how you’re feeling about this time of the year on my Instagram stories, and here’s what you told me:

I feel out of control.

I tell myself not to care, but honestly, I care a lot.

I’m exhausted from the constant battle between consumerism and binge eating.

I’m anxious about what I’ll face, and I’m drowning in guilt every time I indulge.

Sound familiar? Because there were like a hundred plus responses like that, and I hate that. I hate that you guys feel this way, and I a hundred percent get it, because I used to be the same, too.

That feeling of food scarcity, it was bad enough normally for me, but during the holidays, it always felt ten times worse. There was this constant back and forth of wanting to have the holiday goodies because they’re not here all the time. And I know that I like them and feeling panicked about not getting to try them while also not wanting to have them either in the house, because I knew that once I started it would open up a door that I felt like I couldn’t close.

It didn’t make sense yet. In my brain, it made all the sense in the world. If you relate to any of that, buckle up, because over the next few weeks, we’re diving deep into getting you prepped for the holidays, whether you’re just starting your healing journey or you’re ready to level up. Let’s freaking go.

And today we’re kicking things off by tackling unhelpful thoughts head on because, yep, we’re going there again. Let’s dig into why your thoughts truly are the fuel to the binge fire. Quick disclaimer, the information shared in this podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for professional therapeutic advice.

Even though I’m a licensed therapist, what I share here isn’t to diagnose, treat, or offer specific therapeutic guidance. Alright, I’m just gonna say it. It’s time to work on your relationship with food now. There’s never going to be a perfect time. If you really want to change, you have to choose to start now or you’re going to be waiting forever.

I get it. It’s so easy to tell yourself I’ll deal with this after the holidays or when things settle down or when kids are back in school or insert, whatever reason you have here, but how long have you been saying that? How many times have you told yourself that when the new year comes, then you’ll change.

Why not just start now? And yeah, I know, change is scary, it sucks, I’m in it right now, but here’s the thing, it’s not about getting rid of fear, it’s about acting despite it. That’s how you grow and change and build up resilience, otherwise we stay trapped. One of my favorite quotes from Mark Manson nails this, he says, fear doesn’t control us by dominating our emotions, it controls us by quietly convincing us that our comfort is more important than our happiness.

Oof, right? Yikes. Okay, so let me ask you this. Where are you convincing yourself that staying stuck in your current cycle, aka your comfort zone, and no, comfort doesn’t mean comfortable, it means familiar, which makes it comfortable, is more important than finding freedom? Because freedom leads to happiness.

Right? And yeah, it’s gonna be hard, but here’s the thing. It’s hard to go through another holiday season stuck in the binge restrict cycle, and it’s hard to start healing your relationship with food right in the holidays. It’s all hard, but the good news? You get to choose your heart. And guess what? If you choose to work on your relationship with Now you don’t have to do it alone.

You can join a community of people doing it with you and my free Facebook group. Plus starting October 9th, I’ll be offering free live group coaching every week and the Facebook group to support you. All the details are in the description. So make sure to check that out. Now, if you’re still here listening and I didn’t scare you, I’m gonna assume you’re ready to take that first step.

Let’s do it. So let’s talk about where to begin. You’re gonna have thoughts that immediately pop up when you’re faced with a trigger. When you see that pumpkin cookie, all of the treats, the Starbucks whatever, you don’t have control over this. I mean you don’t have control over thoughts. The problem isn’t the immediate thought, it’s what you do with that thought.

Let me put this in a non food body related scenario so you can see it from a different perspective. If you’re home alone late at night and hear a loud noise downstairs, you have the thought, I heard something. Then you start thinking, Is someone breaking in? Do I have anything to protect myself? What if they know I’m up here?

Am I going to die tonight? And then you lay in bed panicking. Okay, please don’t tell me I’m the only one that that’s ever happened to. The thought, I heard something, is a very neutral thought. That didn’t create your panic. It was the thinking that came after, I heard something, that created that panic.

This is so important because we don’t have control over our automatic thoughts, but we do have control over our thoughts. To give you even more perspective, let’s say you were in bed with your partner and heard the same noise. There’s the same immediate thought you guys both now had, I heard something.

But instead of thinking someone is breaking in, your partner starts thinking that maybe the dishwasher broke. They think, what was that noise? Did the dishwasher just break? Is there water all over the floor? How much is it gonna cost to replace the dishwasher? Now they’re stressed about finances and you’re scared about dying.

Same trigger, different emotion. Why do you feel so different than your partner? Why are they stressed and you’re scared? You are thinking different. This is the power of your mind. This means if you want to change your feelings and behaviors around food, you have to change your thinking. I know it’s kind of confusing.

So let me clarify the difference between a thought, which you don’t have control over versus your thinking, which you do have control over. I’m going to ask you a question. Hold on to the first thing that comes to your mind. What’s your favorite holiday? Got it. Okay, why is this your favorite holiday? Like, what makes that one so special?

Now your mind is rolling. What popped into your brain after I asked you what your favorite holiday is? That was a thought. When I asked you why is that your favorite holiday, everything that came after that That was thinking. Thoughts aren’t inherently bad, they just happen. It’s when we think about our thoughts, aka putting our own beliefs, judgments, and interpretations onto that thought, that we can get taken on an emotional rollercoaster.

So let’s take our holiday foods example. You are going to the grocery store just on your normal Sunday or Saturday or whenever you like to go, and you’re trotting in with your car, and you see the pumpkin spice things everywhere. And you’re like, oh. All the pumpkin spice things are out thought. That’s it.

So neutral. Then you start thinking it can’t already be this time of the year. How are these things already out? If I start eating these now, this means I’ll be eating them for months. I can’t do that. I’m going to gain weight. How am I supposed to be around these for the next four months? The thought pumpkin spice things are out is just that, a thought.

You aren’t tanking on an emotional roller coaster until you start thinking about how you feel about the pumpkin spice things being out. Now let me clarify. You’re a human. I’m a human. We’re gonna have beliefs, judgments, and interpretations. We’re not trying to remove those. We’re also not perfect.

Unhelpful thinking happens to everybody, even me. The girl that I’m working with right now will tell you that. The goal is awareness of these thoughts, right? Like why

the goal is awareness of these thoughts. This is about you beginning to notice and become aware of when you’re engaging in unhelpful thinking. And shift it because again, a thought is just a thought and thinking can be a very incredible thing. This is how ideas and new projects get started. It’s engaging with the negative thinking that becomes the problem.

There are pumpkin things, holiday treats, and you’re panicking. It’s your thinking that’s causing the panic. Your emotions are fueled by your thinking. So if you’re panicking, when you go to the grocery store or Where is your head and what is the thinking that is happening and why? Let’s say the emotion you’re experiencing is fear because every holiday season turns into a massive binge fest for you.

You feel fear. We’re not invalidating the fear. We’re trying to understand it. To do that, we have to look at the thinking that’s creating this fear because you’re not in any real danger. I’ll tell you right now, if you have any thoughts like I’m just the kind of person who can’t be around these foods without binging, then yeah, of course, you’re going to feel fear.

But that’s just thinking. And even if that did happen in the past, it doesn’t mean you can’t work on healing your relationship with food now. Right? That’s what you’re doing. That’s why you’re listening to this. It doesn’t have to be your future. You know what I mean? Let’s say the emotion you’re experiencing is anxiety because you feel uncomfortable in your body and think you can’t afford to gain any more weight.

The unknown is scary, so it makes sense that you’re feeling anxiety, but not everybody in your body size experiences this thing. But not everybody in your same body size is experiencing anxiety right now over all the holiday things coming up. So, um, So why, but not everybody in your body size is experiencing anxiety right now about all of these holiday things coming out.

So we need to take a step back and look at what thinking is going on for you. That’s creating all this anxiety. For my clients and my signature for my clients and my signature group, for my clients and my signature for my clients and my signature group coach. For clients of my group coaching program, Binge Eating Unchained, this anxiety is usually connected to self worth.

It’s often less about health and more about the fear of rejection, judgment, or abandonment, and let’s be real, this has nothing to do with the holiday foods. It has nothing to do with those delicious yogurt covered JoJo’s. Blaming the holiday foods is an easy defense mechanism because it’s a lot easier to focus on not buying the holiday cookies or trying to lose weight than facing the reality that you feel like your value and worth are tied to your body size.

That’s loaded. Let’s say the emotion you’re experiencing is disappointment because you’re being reminded that another year has passed and you’re in the exact same place with your relationship with food. This hurts. It hit me hard every single year because I had all of these milestones that reinforced year after year that I was still binging and still struggling.

Right? Like every birthday. Wow. Another year. I’m in the exact same place. Holidays every year in the exact same place. And I know a lot of my clients feel the same. The people that I work with aren’t folks who’ve been struggling for just a few months. Most have been struggling for 5 plus years, and often more like 15 plus years.

So of course you’re feeling disappointed, but I’d encourage you to take a look at how much of this disappointment is tangled up with thoughts of shame and blame, like, uh, I’m a bad person, or I’m disgusting, or I’m a failure. And honestly, that’s sounding more like shame than disappointment, and it’s really easy to confuse the two.

I could keep giving you different examples, but the biggest takeaway I want you to have from this is this. It doesn’t matter if I give you action steps like add the holiday cookies into your meal throughout the day Which I do recommend by the way, if you try it and feel like it’s not working or you’re still binging It’s probably because you’re not ready for that yet.

Your head is still in resistance mode You’re trying to take action But your thinking is pulling you in another direction and it’s gonna keep feeling like you’re So here’s what I recommend that you start with. And if you’re feeling resistance to doing this, it’s a sign that you need to do it even more.

You need to begin by identifying the thinking patterns that aren’t helping you. And ask yourself why. I can tell you that this thinking isn’t helpful. But if you don’t understand why, It won’t matter. It’s like, I tell my clients, I don’t want you to need me anymore. So I need you to understand why we’re doing everything that we’re doing here.

I need you to practice doing everything that I’m doing with you here so that when you don’t have me anymore, you know how to do this yourself, it’ll mean so much more if it comes from you. So I want you to identify the thinking and ask yourself why, like, why is this thinking that you’re having not helpful?

Like, let’s say you have the thinking, I’m just the kind of person that can’t have cookies in the box. Like, let’s say you have the thought, I’m just the kind of person who can’t have cookies in the house without eating the entire box. Why would you say that thinking is not helpful? Do you think that thinking is not helpful?

Do you think it’s helpful? Has it been helping you? I don’t, only you can answer that, right? I think that we can probably both agree that if that was helpful, you wouldn’t be listening to this. So let’s not shame and judge, but just start to understand, just start to get curious. Why might that thought not be helpful?

Another way to frame it is why hasn’t this been helpful? Would you encourage somebody else to think like this? Would you tell somebody else that? Would you say these things to another person? If not, why? Why is it different for you? This is going to help you start to peel back those layers. As you think about your thinking this week, another exercise I recommend, and one of my favorite reflection exercises, is what I call a backwards reflection.

Here’s what you do. I want you to imagine it’s January 1st, 2025. Like, you’re waking up, clock is there, you see the new year, January 1st, 2025. And you’re reflecting on how the holidays went for you this year. You’re opening up that blank journal page and you’re writing it as if it already happened, like in the past tense.

How were the holidays? What were they like? What do you remember? And I’d love for you to challenge yourself here. And instead of focusing on achievements, like I did this, I did that because I know your brain is going to want to go there. I want you to think about your experiences, your feelings, your memories, like what brought you joy?

What was exciting? What traditions did you continue or start? Who did you meet? Who did you spend time with? Once you’ve done that and really take your time with this, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Think about why, like, why do you want those things? Why did those matter to you? Like, why did that come up for you in this?

It’s so helpful to understand why you want this and why you want to feel different before you’re willing to do the work it takes to change. I don’t want this to be another year where you’re I don’t want this to be another year where you’re panicked, stressed, and anxious every time you see a holiday goody.

I don’t want this to be another year where you’re counting down the days until January 1st so you can, quote, get back on track. You don’t have to wait until January to start healing your relationship with food. You can start doing that right now. But before you do anything different, You have to start by becoming aware of the thinking that isn’t helping you because your thinking is going to drive all of your behaviors.

It doesn’t matter what you logically know. You function out of emotion and your emotions are fueled by your thinking. So this week take some time to identify the thinking patterns that aren’t serving you. Why they aren’t serving you. Get curious about why they aren’t serving you and crack open a new notebook or grab one or grab one of the ones on your shelf that you’ve started over and Or grab one of the 13 on your shelf that you keep restarting and never finish because there was something imperfect about it and reflect on the holidays as if they already happened.

We will build on this next week. Oh, and if anything comes up for you that you’d like to talk about or dive deeper into, just a reminder that I’m bringing back free live group coaching Facebook community. They’re going to be on Wednesdays at 1030 a. m. Eastern Time, starting October 9th. This is a great opportunity for us to continue this conversation and dig deeper or for me to help you work through any blocks that you’re having with this.

I really hope to see you there. Otherwise, happy reflecting and I’ll talk to you next week.