Episode 94: Breaking The Sugar Struggle SOLO EPISODE
Episode 94: Breaking The Sugar Struggle SOLO EPISODE
In this episode we sit down with....your host, Katelyn Parsons.
Katelyn Parsons is a Certified Intuitive Eating + Body Image Coach, Speaker, and host of the weekly podcast, Body Truth.
After years of struggling with bulimia and disordered eating, she not only found recovery but recognized a crucial missing link in the wellness industry- empowerment + individual sustainability around health. This inspired her entrepreneurial journey and life mission to shift the conversation toward healing our relationship with food and body.
For the past 4 years, Katelyn has helped countless creative leaders transform their relationship with food and body image through an integrative, evidence-based process so that they can move through each day feeling more present, empowered, and comfortable in their skin, without worrying about what to eat.
You’ll also find Katelyn snuggled up with her cat or strolling the beach in sunny San Diego with her husband and their pup Winnie.
In this conversation we talk about:
Four main reasons why you might be having a sugar addiction feeling
The power of self compassion in your journey
Practical questions to ask yourself and reflect on
Connect with me...
IG: @katelyn.parsons
Website: katelynparsons.com
Ready to heal your relationship with food + body?
Book your FREE Body Trust Breakthrough Consult
Grab your FREE Intuitive Eating Workshop
Get weekly email support from me to help you heal your relationship with food + body image
TRANSCRIPTION
Episode 94: Breaking The Sugar Struggle SOLO EPISODE
Katelyn:
Hi, welcome back to another solo episode of the podcast, so stoked to be with you today. And I am really looking forward to just having an honest conversation about sugar. Because if you are somebody who struggles with that addictive feeling to sweets, if you ever feel like once you start, you just can't stop, if you've ever found yourself not buying certain foods, because you're afraid that you'll eat the entire thing.
I see you, you're not alone, I have been there for a really long time, I get this on a very personal level. And today, I really understand it on a professional level.
What's behind that sugar addiction feeling as well as going through my own personal healing with this leading tons of clients through this healing process with sugar. And I want to share some of the main reasons why so many of us feel that sugar addiction feeling. I want to offer this to you because knowledge is power.
Having an understanding around what drives these intense sugar cravings can really be a powerful entry point into healing and getting out of that cycle. And when you're out of that cycle, you are able to have a more peaceful, free, easy, empowering relationship with yourself, I was going to say food. But really this goes beyond just your relationship with this.
This really goes into your relationship with you as a being, your most important relationship in your life, and how you live your life. So big deep breath in. Let's call in some self compassion as we are talking about all of this.
Before I even get into this I'm going to talk about four main reasons why you might be feeling this sugar addiction feeling. And before we even start to unpack this, I really want to just set the expectation.
This takes time, this healing process requires a lot of unlearning. And a lot of relearning, a lot of us have years of these types of rules and fear around food, particularly sugar that will take a while to unpack this is a deep rebuilding of trust with yourself and food.
A lot of this is really sneaky. A lot of this is nuanced. So I just think it's really important as you are beginning to learn some of these new tools and different ways of approaching your relationship with food and sugar for the purposes of this episode, to really know what the expectation is, this is not an overnight approach. It's not a one and done.
It really is a process that takes time, and will probably come with lots of bumps, that feeling of you know, the setbacks and just tough times, right healing is not it's not pretty, but man, it's powerful. It is like the best when you can really start to do the work that gets you to a place to feel that really present peaceful, powerful relationship with food, your body, your life.
So let's do it. Let's go through four of the main reasons why you might be feeling addicted to sugar.
So first one that I want to mention, I've talked about this a lot in social media, emails, blogs, previous podcasts. You may or may not have heard what I'm mentioning today, but I'm just condensing it into one single episode.
So the first one is restricting carbohydrates. And this is really this is a hot topic because we are in a current climate, in diet culture that has really confused and demonized this particular food group and the truth is our mind and our body need carbohydrates, particularly if you are a woman listening to this, this is really, really important for hormone support for just regulating your internal body chemistry for balancing your blood sugar. And for really supplying enough energy to our brains, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, which is a natural sugar. And glucose is essential for brain fuel.
So when our body doesn't have that need met, when it doesn't have enough carbohydrates, it's going to, it's going to let you know. And this is one of the drivers for these intense sugar cravings. Because carbohydrates are broken down into sugar, your body on a really primal level already knows the quickest source of access to sugar. And so that's one of the reasons why we immediately feel that pull towards sweets, because it's being restricted. So something to keep in mind, adding in carbohydrates throughout the day.
This is not all or nothing, this does not mean only eat carbs, this does not mean only eat one particular type of carb. Like I said, this is nuanced. This is layered. And we want to make sure that we're balancing in a variety of carbohydrates throughout the day. And really checking in with where any lingering food rules around carbs are still taking place. Because that is something that can really create a roadblock in this aspect of healing our relationship with food, in particular, our relationship with sweets. Okay, moving on.
Second reason why you might be feeling that sugar addiction feeling is restricting sweets or desserts in general. And oftentimes, the mental limitation around sugar is enough to trigger a preoccupation with those obsessive thoughts with sugar.
If you've ever been in a situation where you feel like you just can't stop thinking about a dessert, or wanting to eat more of a dessert, or just trying to willpower your way through not having something that is very often a result of the restriction. So, restriction in general, because your body is really craving not access to just energy in your body, enough food and enough food consistently. But particularly access to sweets.
So the example that I like to give to paint the picture for this is this is kind of like me saying don't think of an elephant. What's the first thing that you're thinking about right now, right? So if you are really trying to willpower yourself to not think about sugar or not think about having sugar. If you're putting that really hard and fast rule on something, you will almost always be geared towards those preoccupations and obsessive thoughts around the food.
So we want to make sure again, that we are adding in that variety and adding in that satisfaction. And really, I love working with clients on repairing their relationship with sweets and desserts, because so often, we've created so many rules around certain types of sweets that we have not even really been able to determine what sweets we actually like. Because it does feel so off-limits and taboo, which means we want to even more most of the time.
And so really what we're working towards is adding enough variety, and eventually being able to redefine which sweets and desserts you actually prefer, which is really empowering when there is this neutrality created around dessert. And this sense of peace and freedom. That is when you really get to decide what your personal preferences are. And that just oh my god, it gives me all the feelings because for me that was so that was such a milestone in my own healing process. And it often is for clients that I support as well too. It's just it's really cool and it also creates this deeper level of satisfaction with foods that you're eating as well, too.
Okay, third reason why you might be experiencing this addictive feeling to sugar is not eating enough food. So again, we want to make sure we are adding in enough food, enough variety of food eating consistently throughout the day, eating in this way, helps to balance our blood sugar. And sugar, in general is the quickest source of energy, which we already mentioned before, and our body knows that very well for survival. So again, going back to those really primal roots of your body, just protecting you, this is the reason why.
So it really is so amazing to think about you know it, I really get the chaos and the struggle around our mind and our body and food and all of these things. And when we get to the core of what our body is trying to do, it's really to protect us. And that's really conflicting, often with the messages that we're getting from diet culture, in general. So, again, self-compassion, this is complex, but that's really what's at the crux of all of this.
So when we don't eat enough food throughout the day, enough in terms of the amount enough in terms of the variety, the consistency, we're more likely to crave sweets, again, the quickest source of energy, our body knows that.
And so that is often why your body is going to crave sweets, because it feels like it is in a state of famine, and needs quick access to food to keep you alive. Pretty cool, in my opinion.
Okay, and last one that I want to talk about is our emotional needs. If our emotional needs in general are not being met, this can really create that feeling and desire towards intense cravings around dessert.
This is not to demonize emotional eating at all, emotional eating is really normal. It makes sense, a lot of times, very often it's confused with just restriction that we have put our body through for so long. And so it gets confused with these really intense emotions when it's really our body, just needing more food.
And so when we're re nourishing our body through the healing process, you know, whether you're in an eating disorder or whether you're just experiencing disordered eating by way of diet culture, even slight, sneaky restriction, can really create that emotional intensity around food. And counter to this as well. If you're suppressing emotions, if you're not giving yourself access to feel your feelings throughout the day, and release your feelings throughout the day, very often this can come into a control mechanism which kind of fuels that into one single aspect of life in the purposes of this episode, that could be sweets and desserts.
So again, it's really just zooming out, creating more permission, abundant opportunity in your life, to feel your feelings and having access to more food.
I understand there's a privilege in that statement. And I know that not every single person is going to be able to have that type of access. But whatever that looks like for you. Really make sure that you're prioritizing that enough variety of food, enough consistency of foods. This is a big one, when we are in that willpower mode.
We very often become disconnected from our emotions. And a lot of times feeling our feelings can feel really scary. So it becomes easier to just shove them under the rug, or just kind of push them to the side and press onwards we're kind of taught this in our culture just to kind of suck it up and move forward. This really goes into our environments that were raised in messages that we were taught developmental theories and how each of us become our own unique selves, identities, a lot of a lot of things here.
But what I want to invite you to explore today, without feeling completely overwhelmed by everything I just shared is to just check in throughout the day. When you feel a sensation in your body, because that's the first place that we experience emotions in our bodies. That's why we call them feelings, we feel them first physically.
So when you start to notice that, just check-in, even if you feel like it's too intense, and you do decide to push it to the side without exploring it, just beginning to notice how present that is. And your feelings give you feedback. And so this is such an empowering part of the healing process. Because when we really start to let go of that fear, develop emotional rate regulation, school, the school, emotional or emotional regulation skills, emotional awareness tools, This really creates a safe environment for each of us to feel our feelings.
And when we can feel our feelings, we can honor those feelings, meet those emotional needs adequately. And when this is consistent when we're doing this, on a regular basis, very often this correlates with how we are eating as well, too, that does not mean that we can never eat. Because we are feeling a certain way, it is quite the opposite. And I want to make a strong emphasis on that. If you are only using food as the tool to cope emotionally, that's where it can feel really tricky, and really chaotic. And it's tough. I've been there before raising both of my hands here. But there are other options.
Food is one tool that can be used to meet emotional needs. And so that is something to just consider as well when you are just digesting all of this reflecting on your own relationship with sugar and where that's showing up in your life right now. I really want to invite you to think about these four things.
So just to kind of recap. Restricting carbohydrates, what's your current relationship with carbohydrates? What have you been taught? What messages have been really emphasized in your life around this food group? What rules do you have? What's? Where are you shooting yourself? Perhaps without even realizing it? Restricting sweets in general?
Are there any off limit? Desserts? Or just sweet treats that you know very well? Or perhaps they're just kind of lingering? You know? How are you? How have you created a really intentional restriction around dessert? And where are the more nuanced kind of sneaky rules coming in in your life?
What's your relationship with just food throughout the day in general? Are you eating enough food? Are you skipping meals? Are you eating enough variety of food throughout the day? Have you found yourself kind of in a pattern of falling following somebody else's plan? Sticking to safe foods because you just don't trust yourself with food? Just this underlying fear around certain types of foods? And what does that look like for you right now?
And then just your emotional needs? How? What is your relationship with feeling your own feelings right now? How does that look for you? This is really important to just pause and reflect on all of these things. And oh my God, when you do this goes way past your relationship with sweets and desserts sugar, and can really open up a lot of empowerment around food and your body and your life in general.
I hope that you found this helpful. I know that this is a really sensitive time with the holiday season. But regardless, whenever you're listening to this, this episode is releasing during the holidays, but sugar, quote-unquote, addiction is a buzzword that we will hear well beyond the holidays. So I hope that you feel heard and seen and accepted. I hope you feel like you have a next step moving forward today.
Final thought before we wrap up I want to encourage you if this is feeling overwhelming, if you're feeling triggered by this, to just take some deep breaths and get curious what is the thought in your mind right now? What's the story that you're creating? How can you offer yourself some self-compassion in this moment? And if you are adamant about just taking the next step, what's one single thing that you can commit to?
Right now, what's one single intention that you want to set for yourself and moving forward, perhaps it's simply looking at one of these four areas, perhaps it's taking action and shifting something really specific in one of these four areas. When I'm working with a client this is something that takes time, sometimes months, sometimes years. And so please keep that in mind as you are navigating this on your own, being patient with yourself, giving yourself permission to get really curious. Nonjudgment, self-compassion.
And if you are in a place where you want to really take this deeper, get support around, doing the healing that will give you permission to trust your body, rebuild a peaceful, free, easy relationship with food, please reach out to me, you can find all my information in the show notes, you can book a consult, we can really just get clear on what the biggest roadblock is for you, your vision for healing, and then from there, decide if coaching makes sense. And if it makes sense at this time, all of the next steps.
Okay. That's all I love you. I am just sending you lots of courage, and compassion, you're awesome if you made it to the end of this episode. This is intense. So I'm really, really just so grateful that you are showing up for yourself in this way today.
And it's really awesome because when you do this work, it's for you, but you indirectly help so many people around you as well to just think about that as well to how many people you might not even be sharing this with but just by way of living your life leading by example. People in your life, family, friends, your work, your communities, how you're just showing up, so keep going.
I'll talk to you later. Bye.