Bites & Body Love (v)

Overcoming Barriers in Exposure Work: Making peace with all foods!

• Jamie Magdic

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Unlock the secrets to overcoming the toughest barriers in exposure work and finally achieve food freedom. Do traditional methods of managing your relationship with food leave you feeling stuck? Join us as we explore the normalcy of encountering stuck points, how to reframe these moments as natural responses rather than failures, and the critical role of repeated exposures to charged-up foods. We delve into the importance of community support and guidance to help you navigate mindset traps and persist through discomfort. Discover how these strategies can lead to greater emotional freedom in your relationship with food.

Get ready for actionable insights that will push you out of your comfort zone and onto the path of lasting change. We break down practical strategies for optimizing your progress, from breaking self-imposed rules to balancing the pace of your exposures. Learn how to manage self-judgment, embrace discomfort, and transform perceived failures into stepping stones for growth. This episode is packed with tips, including planning exposures to reduce anxiety and starting with small, manageable steps to gradually build resilience. If you're looking for support and encouragement on your journey toward a healthier relationship with food, this episode is a must-listen.

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Speaker 1:

Okay, we're going to dive more into exposure work just to give you more support. We're going to get into the work. We're going to address the barriers that you may come across, that you are coming across, that you're experiencing those barriers, stuck points, whatever you want to call them. Just what? Those things, those beliefs, those perceptions, those actual practices that get you stuck when you're doing exposure work, that cause you to feel like you are not going to be successful, you can't be successful, you don't want to continue moving forward, that create that overwhelm. And then we're going to talk about how to get through them. So you have the tools, the knowledge, the know-how and the encouragement and support to keep going despite the barriers and stuck points that you're experiencing. I want to say those stuck points are inevitable. You can get stuck in all of them. You can get stuck in all of them consistently. And that's the reason I want to talk about it. It's because I have never gone through this with my clients, um, and where someone did not get stuck or get scared to keep going or just like plowed through the exposure work, no problem. It's hard work and there's a lot of things that come up that create these barriers mentally, these blocks that cause us to believe that we can't move forward. It's not for us, and so it's a big mindset thing here as well, and because we're still forming new experiences, new neural pathways, those old beliefs are still very much there which don't aid and help us in moving forward with these exposures. So, yes, it's just totally normal. I want to very much normalize this as we get started and let's get into it.

Speaker 1:

So the barriers and stuck points First one I tried it and blank happened beliefs. So these beliefs may be. I tried this exposure with Oreos and I binged on them and case in point right. So therefore I cannot continue. Another example I tried to expose myself to having more ice cream and bringing that in, and I have been having ice cream every day. So I should stop all these beliefs. These kinds of beliefs really keep people stuck and let's walk through some of them.

Speaker 1:

So when we have this thought that I tried Oreos and I binged on them and then therefore I should stop, we're connecting the wrong dots here and having this kind of mindset is going to prohibit you and cause you to get stuck and not move forward. This is these stuck points binging feeling, very uncomfortable feeling, maybe stuck in the binging more than you would have hoped for, maybe feeling more shameful or more scared than you would have hoped for. In the experience, all are just very normal and the thing we don't want to do is draw a conclusion about it. Okay. So we want to say I tried to expose myself to Oreos and I binged on them, and that makes sense because I haven't had Oreos in a long time and that's my natural body, my, my body response to this, and so that means I need to keep exposing myself to Oreos, to decharge them, to feel more comfortable with them, so I need to keep getting uncomfortable and trust that the charge I will, the Oreos will lose its charge and I will no longer want to binge on them. Okay, so that's a very, very important shift to moving forward is to accept the struggles and barriers that come along and to not draw these conclusions about them. Ok, and this is when this happens. That's why it's really important to seek that support. So if you currently are in the food program and not just have purchased the food course alone or parts of the food course alone, of the food course alone, that the support is highly encouraged due to this very thing which is getting caught in these mindset traps, losing hope because of the uncomfortable experiences you're having and then deciding to not want to move forward, whereas when you have that support and encouragement from your support team those leaders, but also the other people going through it, you can hear all the insights and encouragement of where people have been in the same spot and can encourage you. Just keep going, you'll get out of it. And those leaders who say this should be normal, keep going. How can we support you? So we want to be very careful of those, those thoughts, and this is another, another reminder.

Speaker 1:

I know we went over this, but when we have charged up foods, when we're doing exposures and we have charged up foods are really set in ingrained rules. They are going to take time. They are going to take repeated exposures, not just one, not just two, multiple. Now you may have some that are one and two and that's maybe because they are not as charged up in your mind. But if we had a scale of a charge from one to 10, those charged up foods that are maybe at a 10, or that charged up rule that you break that's at a 10, that's going to take more exposure work than something that's charged up at a two, and the reason for that is because you have more fear around that 10, you have more shame coming up around it, and so, and that fear and shame and distrust around that food experience in rural is going to cause more anxiety, cause more judgment, cause more fear and then in turn, you know, going to kind of work against you, and so that's why we need more practice with it. Okay, so just keep telling yourself, the more charged up this will be, the more uncomfortable it will be, the more I will have to practice. But that doesn't mean it won't work. It just means I need more practice.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the next thing, um, and I'm getting, I'm going a little bit into how to fixing it. It's going to be hard to just explain these stuck points without saying how to fix them. So I'm going to probably speak to how to fix these all a little bit, but then on the next slide we're going to go over what tools to use to address all of these different stuck points. Okay, all right. Next one Too uncomfortable or not getting uncomfortable enough? So let's talk about the first one. It's too uncomfortable or not getting uncomfortable enough? So let's talk about the first one. It's too uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

If you are doing these exposures and they are out of your window of tolerance, go back to the course toolbox. If you're in the large program and you in the large body image program with the food program, go back to the tool, the course toolbox, and it talks about the window of tolerance. But if you're out of your window of tolerance, if you are out of this place where you can cope, where you are just too overwhelmed or dysregulated or too underwhelmed and dissociated, that is too uncomfortable. We want to get to a place where we are uncomfortable or even very uncomfortable, but we're in our window of tolerance to be able to be there in the moment without getting too overwhelmed or without dissociating and leaving our bodies and not being even part of the experience, right. So if you're too uncomfortable, that means the exposure may be too difficult and you need to build up to that specific exposure. So let's keep going with the Oreos, because that's what we've been referring to specific exposure. So let's keep going with the Oreos, because that's what we've been referring to. That's the example we've been referring to.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so when it comes to Oreos, that Oreo experience, if that is out of your window of tolerance. It's a 10 charged food. It's the one you went for right away before you started with something else. We'll want to go down a notch and start exposing ourselves to something different. Let's say, like, maybe chips are a five for you on the charged up list. Let's start with that, build our confidence with our ability to have a successful food exposure and to start feeling more neutral around chips and then move up to the Oreo. We want to be in a tolerance level of discomfort, but still there and not overwhelmed. And maybe we can label this as anywhere from an exposure of 3 out of 10 on anxiety to maybe 6 out of 10 or 5 out of 10 on the anxiety level. So you can just build that confidence and still get uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. So you can just build that confidence and still get uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable.

Speaker 1:

The other reason why exposures may not be working for you or you're getting stuck in that exposure work and neutralizing food is because you're not getting uncomfortable enough. You're still staying too comfortable. You might be in that range of one or two on the anxiety level, um, and you're not pushing yourself quite enough to create that neutrality. For example, if you're exposing yourself to Oreos and you are already comfortable with having one Oreo. You allow yourself that and that is um a rule that you're you have already already allowed.

Speaker 1:

Then to create full peace with that, we need to keep going and push ourselves. We stay in our comfort zone. We only build that amount of comfort right If you are only feeling comfortable by. If you have a rule that says I can only have a sweet a day to feel safe. It's great, you feel safe in that. But what happens when you want to have two sweets a day or three sweets a day? We want to keep pushing the limit so that we can get to that place where we have built full trust, comfort in all of these different experiences. Another example is we want to really create, we want to create flexibility, so the more uncomfortable we can get the best, the better. So if you're really, really comfortable with having this certain way of eating, at certain times a day, what your food looks like right certain times a day, what your food looks like right we want to get really uncomfortable by drastic, by moving, moving slowly to a drastic change where you're eating at totally different times, totally different things and you're changing that up every single day, because then you are building all of these different experiences then and you can show yourself I'm safe, I can handle this, I'm still okay. Oh look, now I don't really worry about what time I eat during the day. Oh, now those things no longer scare me, right? So you want to make sure you keep.

Speaker 1:

You get uncomfortable consistently and you don't stay comfortable, because then change doesn't happen and what you see is, the more and more you break these rules, it's going to be uncomfortable, but instead of being at a six out of 10 for a certain exposure, it becomes a five out of 10, a four out of 10. And that food becomes way more neutral. No big deal, you don't care, it's not, doesn't feel like it's in control of you. It gets a ton care, it's not, doesn't feel like it's in control of you. It gets a ton, just more neutral. You get more free. So don't do yourself the disservice of staying comfortable, because then you can't create change. So keep getting uncomfortable. Have that accountability. Reach out for support to help you, to assess are you getting uncomfortable enough so they can push you? Super, super important.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the next thing is telling yourself and I should have put this in quotes I will never get there. This is not for me, and we can tack this onto the mindset for the first point that we went over. But mindset is very, very important here. Oh, another thing here I thought I had, which was judgment. So the mindset of this critical, a critical mindset of yourself, judgmental mindset, based on the struggles that you're having, if you're judging your experience rather than being curious about the experience, it's going to definitely keep you stuck because it causes you to have these thoughts and beliefs that, like this one, I will never get there. This is not meant for me. What that does is it totally closes the door on the opportunities that lie ahead. If you are telling yourself, because I did this exposure and it didn't work the way I wanted, or I'm not where I want to be yet as quickly as I want to be, so I'm never going to get there, this is not meant for me. You are just closing the door on that and you can honestly drastically change the outcome of the experience because you stopped too soon because of what you were telling yourself.

Speaker 1:

So we really want to be careful of our mindset and falling into that trap where people and I get this all the time. I mean I don't know if I haven't gotten this from a client yet where they have been going through exposures and they say I can see how this works for other people, but this was not meant for me and the reason. It's very understandable that you feel this way and I want to validate that, and that is because it's very, very scary to do something so differently and go against all of these rules inside your head. And when you don't have trust in something, what's going to come up is all of that distrust during that discomfort or during that quote unquote failure you're saying you're having. But that barrier, that failure, that struggle point, is necessary to get to the other side. So you have to think of it in this work. As I am here, I do not have trust. In order to get to distrust, I need to go through all of those failures, all of those struggles, those binges, that discomfort in order to get to the other side. If you don't go through it, you will not get to it. You have to go through it to experience that.

Speaker 1:

The next thing that can create a stuck point for food exposures is going too slow. What I find is if people are exposing themselves too slowly, then it can feel like you're really stuck because you don't see the progress of the exposure work, because you're not challenging yourself enough. So if you are, just if you're bringing in I'm going to go back to the chip example If you're bringing in a chip a day and you're not having a handful or letting yourself just eat from the bag and going to an exposure like that, if that is in your comfortable range and your window of tolerance, then you can be working on one chip for a whole week, then need to bring in two chips, then need to bring in ice cream, then need to bring in candy, then need to bring in eating outside of your comfort zone times. So you need to, we need to assess how slowly you're going, because it can be discouraging. The other thing is going too quickly. Now there is no right pace. It's going to be different for everyone and it depends on your how you're experiencing it and where you are. But for some people just like going too slow. You can go too fast, where you kind of scare yourself and and we have to assess what's going to to be best and then we're going. You have to adjust that.

Speaker 1:

It is very much an experiment and I talk about this a lot like jumping into a pool or dipping your toe into into the pool, into the cold water. So when you are getting into the pool and you want to get into the pool and swim, we're going to call the pool food exposures, we're going to call the pool food freedom, food flexibility. When you're getting in, trying to get into that pool, getting into that pool, you will want to assess how you get in, whether that is going right away up to knee height into the cold water, or you're dipping a toe in at first to feel it out, or you are jumping right into the pool, whatever works for you. Now you might, like I said, if you go too fast and you jump right in, you might have to get out right away and reassess how much of your body you want to get into that pool. You might be slowly dipping a toe and then the other toe and then need to assess like, wow, I'm never going to get in the pool at this pace. It's actually causing it to be harder. So you have to assess that pace for yourself and use the support.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so now let's talk about what to do. All right, we talked about the most common pitfalls, the most common stuck points, why people don't want to continue moving forward, why they get too afraid and they stop and they don't continue to food freedom because of the discomfort and the feelings of failure and telling themselves that they're failing and that's not meant for them. Okay, so what do we do? Here are some tools for your toolkit and some words of advice that I often tell clients that often help them to be very successful. So, number one planning your exposures. In order to minimize problems like stress, overwhelm, unanticipated challenges, we want to pre-plan. It's not always necessary. I wouldn't say you always have to have a planned out exposure, but in the beginning and depending where you're at with your anxiety around food exposures and with your relationship with food and body, planning is very, very helpful. So an example of this may be if you wanted to expose yourself to Oreos.

Speaker 1:

Let me use a different example. If you wanted to expose yourself to going out to a restaurant. Let's plan for what you might experience. What do you need to be successful? What can you anticipate? How can you set yourself up for a positive mindset? How can you take care of yourself after the hard experience? So you might plan to go out to the restaurant with your two closest friends to support you and fill them in on what you're going to do. You might want to just expose yourself to that menu beforehand to really skit the gist of what is going to be, so you're just not overwhelmed when you get it right. And to know what's on that menu, because if you see that there's calories written on that menu, we want to. We want to pick a different restaurant? Okay. You also might want to do the exposure of going to the restaurant and picking what you feel like in the moment. However, if you're not quite there yet, a plan that you can have is picking what you want to have that's going to be out of your comfort zone when you get to that restaurant. So let's say you pick pasta. Okay, so you're planning out that you're going to have pasta. And another way to start planning is what thoughts are going to come up in your head when you're doing that exposure work.

Speaker 1:

You could be maybe self-conscious, uncomfortable in your clothes you can maybe be fearful about because you have this idea about carbs or your body not being able to handle things, and so, to prep yourself, you can listen to the modules again around what your body does to take care of yourself, how it can handle those things the benefits of carbohydrates right. You can also make sure you prepare yourself to dress comfortably, because if you're hyper conscious of your body, especially when you're eating something that is you're not trusting up, then we want to dress for the occasion, to feel comfortable. That's not going to pull on maybe our stomach, right, so we set ourselves up for that. We also might want to plan out our mindset by having a podcast. That is super helpful for mindset around diet culture.

Speaker 1:

Prior to going into that food exposure or after that food exposure, as you come home, you might want to plan for distractions after and distractions during, whether it's certain topics that you really want to talk about, breathing exercises, getting yourself into the moment with the five sentence senses, practice spot, something that the color blue look at, you know, find those things around the room, that activity, right, you can. And then afterwards maybe you have that. You're going to watch your favorite movie, put on your favorite comfortable outfit and or maybe you're going to go right to sleep. Try to sleep off any kind of anxiety that might come up. You might put on and have a dance party, you might go for a walk, whatever it might be, okay, plan for that. It can set you up for the most success. Okay, but then another exposure is not planning and kind of being more spontaneous, so it just depends what exposure you're doing and where you're at.

Speaker 1:

The next thing we chatted about it in the last slide is being aware of self-judgment. When you are doing exposures, when you're going through this work, you really want to use that toolbox, or that tool from the toolbox that we chatted about for the program, which is mindful awareness, rather than judging or judgment. You don't want to be judging this experience, drawing all these conclusions, doing those 10 unhelpful ways of thinking which are also in the course toolbox. You want to be judging this experience, drawing all these conclusions, doing those 10 unhelpful ways of thinking which are also in the course toolbox. You want to be very aware of your thought process and judging the experience. Rather, we want to go into the exposure and have mindful awareness and be curious. The key word here is curious about your experience. How am I experiencing this exposure? How am I experiencing this exposure? How am I experiencing this food? What fear is coming up? How am I feeling in my body? What are my thoughts? What are my surroundings, becoming very aware and curious and being mindful of, if judgment comes up to, to be able to look at that, thank it and let it go and do that parts work.

Speaker 1:

Also part of the larger program is that parts work. Okay, being aware of what part of that is there? Why is it there? How is it trying to serve me when that judgment comes in? Okay, next one starting small and having stepping stones. We chat about that in the last time, so I won't, I won't go over that too much, but just making sure you're aware of the anxiety levels that each exposure brings up. And having stepping stones to the something larger. So that might be.

Speaker 1:

If you're exposing yourself to pasta, it might be having pasta around, then a bite of pasta, then a pasta, a bite of pasta with some sauce that scares you, then a small plate of pasta, then a small plate of pasta, then a larger plate of pasta, maybe having pasta every day, pasta every week, and having those stepping stones and getting to more discomfort while staying in your comfort zone, in your relatively uncomfortable comfort zone. And then the next thing is busting those myths right. So going back to those modules where we are going over those myths around food. We're talking about those misconceptions. So go to those modules, go to external podcasts, external books to help you to know the truth and remember the truth about carbs, for example, around pasta. That's going to be really helpful because knowledge is powerful, knowledge is key and it's going to really create this great foundation so that when you're going in to the exposure you're not thinking, oh my gosh, this pasta is going to kill me because of these things I heard from diet culture, but instead you are hearing your own voice, the new education, and you're empowered with the fact that carbs are good for you. Carbs are necessary. You can listen to your body. Your body can handle it. Diets aren't good Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay.

Speaker 1:

Now the next thing is assessing what you are afraid of and getting to the bottom of that fear. So when that fearful part comes up for you before, during or after that exposure, you, if you need to distract because you're too uncomfortable, okay, distract, perfect. But if you don't have to distract, get very curious with that part of you that is speaking to you about that fear, so we can understand that fear more, so we can help it to become not so scary or not a fear anymore, the more awareness you have around the fear, why it's there to disprove it, to comfort yourself, to support yourself through that fear and still move forward, the more so you're going to set yourself up for a lot of success by closing your eyes to that fear, pretending it doesn't exist. That's actually not going to help because you're going to have this thing unconsciously, that we don't have awareness around telling you don't do that, don't do that, do that, don't do that, and all we can hear is don't do that, but we don't know why. We can't empower ourself with the why, with the education, with the tools that that fear needs in order to move forward with the fear. Okay, the next thing is just assessing again your mindset, how you're thinking in those unhelpful thinking styles. So go back to that toolbox. Or if you are aware, after going through that toolbox, what you tend to do most, for example, if you really use that black and white thinking, unhelpful thinking style, then that's going to be important to know as you go into these food exposures and you start using that black and white thinking and applying that toward your experience. We want to be aware and shift those thoughts assess, analyze, comfort, support and shift those thoughts. Next thing is and this is a big thing and that is, people can be unsuccessful with food exposures or fully moving to food freedom, which is why I've created this program. Why I have support in this program, is because people don't know it's an option for them to move to a place where, um, that that this is possible, that they won't stay in this incredible discomfort with food exposures, and so they. They go back to where they were and they're really now fearing the experience that they had and stopped with. You know, they stopped with the scary experience of going to the restaurant and possibly being terrifying, and that all of these thoughts came up and it was just horrible, right, and then that's the only experience they have with food exposure. So they stop and they don't move forward. You need to get support, accountability and someone holding hope for you and encouraging you to move forward many times to be able to continue moving forward, and I'm going to give you an example here.

Speaker 1:

When I was 16, I drove through my garage door, in front of friends as well, but anywho, I drove through the garage door and I remember I went in the house and I was crying and I locked myself in the bathroom and my dad followed me and he said we're getting in the car. And I was like heck, no, we're not getting in the car, I'm not getting in the car, I'm not going back out there, I just drove through the garage door. I never know how to drive Right. If I didn't get back in that car, it would have been way scarier to drive. I could have jumped to all these conclusions about that experience held onto. That experience said that's just what driving's like. That's the kind of driver I am and maybe possibly always had trouble driving or never wanted to drive again. However, because I was forced to keep going, I was forced to create new experiences, to create more comfort, to see that, oh, I will survive. I won't always drive through garage doors and knock on wood. I haven't done it again yet and I was okay.

Speaker 1:

So that's the same thing with food exposures. We want you to get the support necessary and accountability necessary from someone who can provide that, like in the group program for us and other accountability buddies to keep going right. And that leads me to the last point of keep going. Don't give up People who don't get to full food freedom. The reason why is because they did not keep going with the discomfort. They stopped with the discomfort because of the fear that came up and I hold a lot of compassion for them. That's so awful, it keeps them stuck. It's so not good. But we don't want you to be that person. We want you to keep going through the discomfort. Get those, the build those skills, build that toolbox, increase your window of tolerance so you get to food freedom. Um, and that other side where you don't have to fear these things anymore, you don't ever have to do food exposures again because it's it's just neutral and you have trust with your body. Okay, with that, we'll go ahead and end here and we will see you in the next module.