Why Do We Overeat? IME Community Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of the Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge (RYIR challenge).

The focus for Week 2 is to stop overeating and the power of choice. It’s all about individual autonomy. Sounds redundant!

Everyone asks me and I get a lot of emails and requests for coaching for adults. I get to help everyone with reversing insulin resistance and reaching health goals on TikTok and IG, but coaching teens is my favorite. It’s why I started IME Community and it’s my dream and vision. So, if you’re a teen 12 to 18 or a parent of a teen, check out IME Community and Join the Community to get life and weight coaching for teens, on Zoom with me! It’s only $24.95 per month.

I also coach parents to help support your teen’s health independence.

Here’s Where You Are Now

If you’ve done week 1 of the Reverse Your Insulin Challenge, awesome, and if you are getting started now, then, great. You can catch up easily. I would encourage you to get do Week 1 of the challenge because it sets the stage for a lot of the important goal slaying!

Ready for week 2?

I’ve got your back this week. We are going to learn why we overeat, how to stop overeating, and level up with food with the power of choice.

We all come in different shapes and sizes. Let’s celebrate that. What a boring world we would be living in if we bought into our society’s messed up external standards. For many of us, we want to create a healthier and more fun life for ourselves.

Why We Overeat

We have to take a look at the root causes of overeating. One of the simplest ways I’ve heard we are overweight is because we overeat.

That sounds so simple and we’re talking reversing insulin resistance which is more complex. To say we are overweight because we overeat is kind of like the old calories in calories out mentality that I keep encouraging us to stay away from.

There is so much cool science behind hunger and appetite and the hormones and neurotransmitters that keep our bodies at our current weight set point. That doesn’t mean we’re stuck. Genetics, including what we’re learning about epigenetics, our environment, and behavior all contribute to our health.

But, the reality is we do overeat and overeating is one of the contributors to weight gain. Everyone overeats sometimes. There’s no shame in it. I’ve really had so much desire to overeat in my life. I still have it at times.

There are many factors that contribute to why we are overweight. We are not cause-and-effect machines. I’m going to talk about how to get to the root cause of our overeating and ask that you create some self-discovery and self-awareness, which is the most powerful thing ever we could do.

So why do we overeat? We overeat because we have over-desire. I did a few TikTok videos on this and specifically on what I think are the top three reasons we over-desire food. I want you to spend some time on this because I had many more than three reasons, but I picked out what I believe are all of our top three reasons.

Why do we over-desire food?

We are conditioned to over-desire and overeat food because of the added sugars in our foods and beverages and all of the marketing. This is brain science. Please have grace and compassion for yourself.
We haven’t been taught the skill or given permission to allow or feel our emotions. Instead, we are taught there is something wrong and we fix or numb out with food.

We are stuck in fixed and limited diet culture and thinking which drives a restriction and indulgence cycle and creates over-desire for foods our society tells us are “bad”.

One of the ways to get out of our over-desire for food that causes us to overeat is to recognize that you always have the power of choice. You get to own your power to make choices that serve you and your health goals. Individual autonomy means you are deciding for yourself and that means you are owning your choice.

In week 2, I’m going to help you level up with food choices and you always get to decide! Let’s go!

The Week 2 Reverse Your Insulin Challenge Daily Planner

Monday Motivation: I would love for you to enjoy food and eat food that serves your body and your health goals. This all starts with self-love, which I believe is the only superpower you need. Self-love starts with full or unconditional self-acceptance.

I would love for you to check out the IME 5 steps to full self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is always available to you. It doesn’t even take action. Just take your warm self-acceptance blanket and wrap it around yourself whenever you need it. Say to yourself, I fully love and accept myself. I accept that I am worthy of my healthy life. I accept I have the power to choose what I want!

What are the reasons I overeat?
What relationship do I want with food?
On a scale of 0 to 10, how important is it for me to make changes in how I am eating?
On a scale of 0 to 10, how confident am I that I can make changes in how I am eating?
What’s in my way?

Tuesday Tracking: Today is when you level up (gamer talk) with the power of choice! Woot! Woot!

All levels are taking massive action. Where are you on your stage of change and what makes sense to you?

Level up with mindful eating- hunger scale pre and post meals
Plan one day ahead of time, gather data, simple eating guidelines
Level up to crush your sugary beverage habit and drink more water- replace with the positive and create SMART goals
Level up to healthful balanced meals where you keep it simple-transition to eating complex carbohydrates (like vegetables and whole grains) instead of simple sugary carbs that keep us in craving mode and increase insulin resistance. Make sure you are eating protein and healthy fat whenever you eat.
Want to level up to trend low-carb? At this level, you are ready to remove flour and sugar and create a low-carb lifestyle. Keep it really simple and take out flour and sugar from what you usually eat for meals. Don’t overconsume recipes. Instead, just think of low-carb substitutions.

Wednesday Wisdom: What to expect? Your brain is going to tell you to eat sugary foods. That’s what happens when we are conditioned or habituated to eating sugary foods. There’s nothing wrong. It’s okay. It’s transitional.

You may feel more emotional or irritable because your body and brain are used to numbing out and getting dopamine zings. This is an opportunity to create self-awareness. Go at your own pace. No timeline or urgency. It’s all learning.

Research shows practicing stimulus control and contingency management is helpful to keep you on track. That may mean removing sugary drinks at home, driving a different route home instead of by the fast food restaurant you go through after work, or recognizing the time of day when urges and cravings come up for you, and creating a pause and practicing self-compassion instead of resisting the urge and white-knuckling through it. Create plans A through G for your eating. You are making decisions ahead of time that will keep you on track.

Thursday Thoughts: Keep up with your daily thought downloads where you do a brain dump. Start noticing your three top feelings of the day. It’s our thoughts that create our feelings. What are your thoughts that are creating the top three feelings of the day? You may be judging yourself. Start creating awareness of self-judging and shaming. We have to bring this into the light to disrupt it.

Friday Fun: Do you have an active gratitude practice? Every day, write down three things you are grateful for in the morning and three amazing things that happened today before you go to bed. Cultivating an active gratitude practice creates a joyfully abundant life. We have to be intentional with the practice.

Saturday Success: You are worthy of your health goals. Some people I coach want to create a cheat day on the weekends. They spend a lot of the week creating more over-desire for the sugary foods they eat on the weekend and then end up binging. I would encourage you not to do this. When you make a decision and like your reasons and love your choice and it fits into your why and your future self, you can love your decision, have self-integrity, and create evidence that you can trust yourself to keep promises you make for yourself.

Sunday Strategy: Rest, relaxation, self-care, connect with nature. To set yourself up for success for week 3, I want you to calendarize (yes, this is a verb) self-care. My husband asked me if I wanted to get a massage and I said, “No, I’m really not into those.” Self-care for me is getting outside, writing, getting some time alone, eating yummy food, taking a shower. What does self-care mean to you? Get it on the calendar for week three.