Hello, my dear friends, welcome back to the Healthy Eating for Busy Women podcast. I am your host cat, and I’m happy you’re here with me today. And my goal for today’s episode is for all of us to just […0.5s] chill out a little bit.I want us all to collectively […0.6s] calm down and easier said than done, right? But […0.4s] what I’m going to talk about today if you haven’t seen the title, it’s hyper vigilant healthy eating. But how we attempt to eat healthy and lose weight, how we’re doing this journey is likely how we’re doing a lot of other things.And so I wanna address just hyper vigilance in general in terms of how or us collectively are moving through our day to day lives. Because I actually had, this concept comes up in my coaching with women a lot, but the idea for this episode came up when I was washing the dishes.And I know this sounds ridiculous, but do y’all ever notice when you’re doing a simple task and the amount of effort you’re putting into doing that task and in my case, it was washing the dishes is so much higher […0.4s] then it’s necessary.So picture me doing the dishes and I’m laser focused. I’m trying to really […0.5s] scrub this plate as hard as I can, really make sure it’s clean.And I, the big thing about this I want you to realize is that I’m not getting these dishes done necessarily […0.6s] more efficiently by the amount of focus and effort I’m putting into it or the hypervigilance I’m putting into washing the dishes, but it is a stress state that I am existing in as I’m doing this very basic, mundane task.And so I had this moment and this actually happens often because I try and be as self aware as I can with this work and I will notice there’s moments when I’m doing very mundane, basic things and I’m leaning forward so much in this stress, hyper vigilant state and expending effort where it’s not necessary.And so I leaned back, […0.5s] I slow down, alright, cat, we’re just doing the dishes.It’s fine. Take a breath. And I know y’all will relate to this in some way or another. It’s when we are almost physically […0.4s] and mentally leaning forward day to day on different tasks and we don’t even realize this is happening and so much can results from this like burnout, we can increase stress on the body, so many different symptoms of this.But today we’re gonna talk about it in the lens of hypervigilance with healthy eating cause this is a very real thing.This is very common for those of you […0.5s] who see yourself as more analytical or type a, or, you just feel that you are someone who is capable of getting things done and that healthy eating should be simple, weight loss should be done by now, but you can’t figure out why it’s not happening long term. This is gonna be a really big reason why. So I’m really hoping that what I talk about here today resonates with you in some way and that you can reflect on this episode after you listen to it. So here is what hyper vigilant healthy eating tends to look like. Whether it’s with a woman who, is struggling to eat healthy or maybe you’re, struggling to be as consistent as you want with your weight loss. Here’s what it tends to look like in the beginning. So […0.5s] it’s where you’re constantly monitoring every decision you make as if that is necessary.So you feel like you have to be vigilant of every food choice, right? You feel like you have to be on […0.4s] all of the time in order to make the right decision so you don’t mess up.You treat every bite of food, every meal as something that requires complete control and focus. And what happens is eating decisions and anything with your health become psychologically really heavy and pressuring rather than something you just do.And in case you don’t know my […0.5s] program coaching, the […0.5s] culture I create with women in my programs is to become what we call a naturally healthy eater. So eating healthy, as cheesy as it sounds, it’s not just something you do. It’s kind it becomes who you are in a way where it feels more natural. And so these are patterns we really need to break in order for you to have the weight loss you want in your life sustainably, for you to eat healthy in a way that doesn’t run you down and is sustainable, we need to make this all feel lighter.And what’s happening when we have this vigilance with healthy eating where we’re constantly monitoring everything we do from pressure and it feels really heavy. It’s just never gonna feel natural from that point or be sustainable, right?So just think how are you exhibiting this type of hypervigilance with healthy eating either in the beginning or throughout your health journey, and where might you believe that in order to have control with food and succeed in weight loss that you have to be this vigilant? Because that’s valid. But what I’m hoping for today is that you understand where that’s coming from, because here’s why people become hyper vigilant with healthy eating.Very specifically those of you who, […0.4s] solve a lot of problems from your intellect.So you’re thinking and your problem solving mentally has really served you in areas of your life, and it’s why we become hyper vigilant with food decisions because a trait you might have is that you equate knowledge with solving problems and hitting goals, right?So you equate problem solving in your mind, scanning for data as something that creates your results. But this is not the case with healthy eating and eating habits and creating your ideal body.But what happens is when you start a health journey, you will have increased attention, right? You’re learning things, you’re trying something new, you’re like, this is the moment when I’m really gonna change all my habits. And then what happens is if you create results from this place, you start losing weight, you eat a bit healthier, what will happen is you will start attributing the results you’ve created from the amount of attention you’re giving it itself.And I know this sounds strange, but let me explain. Vigilance is the amount of effort you’re putting towards your focus and towards your decisions. You making those decisions and having the data you need to get results doesn’t come from vigilance. So what can happen is you will equate results in your health journey with mental effort, that vigilance and that constant focus. And then here’s what happens with a lot of women I work with as well.This might happen for you. You will then have a fear that relaxing, that vigilance will undo your progress.So a lot of what happens with the ladies eye coach, they get results and then they have almost this fear that when they start to relax, it’s all gonna go away. And this is actually the most important part of the healing process because we’ve gotta let it start feeling natural.And what this means is healing that part of you that thinks your constant vigilance is what created the results.This is why […0.5s] this comes from beliefs that you’re not in control, that you’re addicted to food, you probably have a pretty low regard from yourself in this area of your life. So you don’t trust yourself yet, right? Which is normal.I’ve had this too. But you think in order to do this, right, you have to always be on […0.4s] beyond that, discipline has to be high at all times. And you’re so afraid of making mistakes and, quote unquote, losing control. But what happens is that you […0.5s] attribute progress to constantly monitoring all of the time.And I want to tell you that over evaluating your progress and overthinking and oversolving is one of the biggest […0.6s] sabotage things I see happen with women in a weight loss journey. Because what happens is there is more effort than you need to be spending.That can happen when you’re in a health journey from vigilance, right? Because what’s happening is you are scanning for problem solving much too often.I think of it like sleeping with one eye open where you’re giving more focus to this area of your life than it’s necessary for you to make decisions and change your results, because here’s the reality, right? Progress with changing your eating behaviors, losing weight, it comes from increased awareness and learning, of course, but this happens over time, over a season of experimentation, adjusting your behaviors and actually building skills, right?This is a process of healing that happens, your results, that you want the long term results, doesn’t happen from vigilance or leaning forward or periods of stress where you do it right, and you never make mistakes.That is not what creates success, and so many of you are trying to get an A+ because you never wanna make mistakes, and you wanna make sure you get it right when actually for this to last long term, we need to put your body and your nervous system in a state where you’re not vigilant, and you’re able to lean back, be self aware without constantly over exerting yourself mentally.So […0.4s] here’s how you’ll know you’re in hypervigilance, and this isn’t black and white. I want you to just use your discernment to see if you feel like this is hypervigilance to you, because this is what I most often see.So effort is spent in hypervigilance when you’re constantly […0.4s] making decisions around food, even when it’s not time to make it. So a lot of, clients come to me and they say, well, I feel like I just don’t have enough time to make healthy eating decisions, which is really interesting.Cause what my clients end up getting to is you just need to make decisions around food when it’s time to eat that food, right? We don’t need more time to eat healthy and lose weight.It’s very simple. We always have it accessible, but what’s happening is you equate time spent in this area of your life with constant problem solving and decision making in your head.So this is one […0.4s] example of hypervigilance, right? Another is persistent and incessant self evaluation. So it’s where you’re constantly thinking, am I doing this right or wrong? You’re questioning yourself. You’re constantly confused. That is one way that you will know that there is too much focus happening.Mental fatigue is a really big one. So if you’re just feeling tired and burnt out and you have no motivation or effort to give anymore, that’s probably not you or anything you’re doing wrong.I can promise you if you’re listening to this podcast, this is something you are committed to and devoted to, but you might also just be burnt out from the overexertion of focus that you’re putting in this area. And that is more than necessary.Another thing is when you’re constantly having internal dialogue about what the right food is, what the wrong food is, whether something’s allowed or not allowed, you just have constant food chatter in your brain, that is one sign that this is happening.And then also if you just feel a lot of pressure and emotional weight around eating and those decisions, hypervigilance is probably occurring as well.And I want you guys to think about hypervigilance as less like this, exact […0.5s] tangible concept and more of a state of being that you can have, right?In the beginning where I shared that silly example of me doing the dishes, it was a hyper vigilant state of doing the dishes where I was leaning forward, hyper focusing, giving it way more effort than I needed to be giving.And that’s what I want you to think about in terms of your hypervigilance with food, and whether that’s happening, because here’s why it leads to burnout.This is the exact reason why you’re starting and stopping healthy eating and weight loss. Because when you’re too vigilant over this area of your life, you are constantly leaking energy by maintaining that high attention. You have no time to mentally recover in this area of your life and to turn your brain off. You never develop a relationship with healthy eating where it feels natural.Because you’ll always equate success with needing to be on and performing highly […0.5s] long term effort eventually over time. What happens at, […0.5s] over time, what happens as you deplete your effort? You’re no longer able to logically problem solve anything, because you’re so burnt out.So what I mean by that is when you have, have high stress, in case you didn’t know, confusion’s gonna be really high, because we need a regulated nervous system to be able to solve problems logically.Those are two different sides of your brain, so if you’re stress burnt out, and […0.4s] you have been putting in too much vigilance in this area of your life, you’re gonna be really confused and wondering what’s wrong with you, and why you don’t have the results yet, which is the worst feeling in the world.What the reality is, is that solving for this area of your life is very simple and doable right now. You can have this result now.It is not complicated. But what’s happening is the amount of effort and fuel you’re putting into solving this problem is too much. So then it burns you out, and then you’re not even able to logically solve this problem, simply because your primitive brain has taken over.And what happens to if you’re constantly […0.6s] focused on being vigilant in this area and expending all this energy, y’all, you will end up with so much frustration, resentment, maybe even rebellious behavior towards food and weight loss, where you’re like, you know what?I’m just gonna sabotage this, cause it’s not worth it. And I know this is kind of a controversial take, but again, this is not black and white. But you will know if this is you, this was me.Sometimes. This is where I can see a lot of, anti diet or anti weight loss culture come from, is because it’s a person who associates weight loss and eating healthy and treating their body well as punishing hypervigilance, which is not what it is. But unfortunately, that’s what we’ve been sold, right?We’ve been sold this really harsh […0.4s] example of what creating, this result in this area of our lives is.It’s kind of with doing the dishes, if we use this ridiculous example, imagine if in order to have clean dishes, what was sold to us is this leaning forward, really visceral, hyper vigilant state of doing the dishes.Eventually we would get better about it and say, you know what? This isn’t worth it doing […0.4s] or […0.4s] having clean dishes is toxic, and it’s not good and we should go against that. No, actually clean dishes is really healthy for the mind and our home. Haha, let’s just not lean forward as we do it.I know this analogy is kind of stupid, y’all, but I hope you see what I mean here. It’s not eating healthy and the results you want that are the problem. It’s not the standards you have for your health that are the problem. It’s the posture that you’re going about it in that is burning you out. And this is a very real thing.So how progress is actually created, in case it’s not obvious, it’s not from hyper vigilance or higher levels of focus or effort.How results are created in this area of your life […0.5s] is painfully simple, not easy, but it’s simple. It’s from taking action, allowing yourself to fail, getting the data from your failures and then evaluating. And what we can call this, which is what is its Progress is created from skill building over time with changing your eating habits and your weight loss. And I don’t care where you are right now. I don’t care what your thoughts are about yourself, how long you’ve tried to solve this problem. I’ve seen it all.You can solve for the results you want with food and body right now cleanly and successfully […0.5s] if you allow it to be the simple and change your approach to this area of your life.But that doesn’t mean it’s easy because what’s gonna happen is you’re living in a state of your body that is really accustomed to hypervigilance. So the biggest problem my ladies have in my coaching, which I’ve had this, so I understand them completely. It’s slowing down.It’s leaning back while, quote unquote, doing the dishes or in this case, changing their eating habits and losing weight. And so results are created by evaluation and adjustment over time. It’s learning what works as you get to know yourself as an eater. It’s making behavioral changes as you figure out what works for you, right?It’s evaluating each week, which is what we do in my process rather than constantly, having surveillance of yourself each and every day, moment by moment. And this is something that comes up with my clients too.I have some clients who come in and they weigh themselves every day. They’re constantly tracking every little thing they eat and they’re evaluating their progress every single day.And it’s not that doing any of these things is wrong, I wanna make that clear, but it’s the energy they’re going about it from.Y’all know what I mean. It’s the fact that they’re in that hyper vigilant state and that’s when they’ll come to me for coaching and I’ll say, hey, let’s check in on this once a week.Go out, let’s take action, get some data, get some results, see what makes you tick. Then let’s evaluate, and then what this client has to process is that vigilance that wants to get there quicker and get there further. And actually, there’s an urgency in a desperation to it.And then that’s emotionally what we have to process. Because y’all, your long term weight loss, your healed eating habits, this version of you wanna be, it is there. It is available to you, but that progress only comes from deliberate trial and error followed by […0.5s] evaluation weekly or as often as we meet, not by constant day to day focus.Because that’s not helping, that’s not getting you anywhere at a certain point. It’s just draining your energy without giving you any return data. So what we wanna do is observe our patterns, evaluate results, adjust our approach as we go, and then just repeat that, so we can build skills.But what I want you to understand is that there is no option for you to become the woman you wanna be with your body and your health, and you not make mistakes.Because where a lot of hypervigilance is coming from is you equate perfection and doing something right, following a plan, right amount of calories, whatever it is with a result you want.And here’s the thing. We could find evidence of that, but it is not useful because as a human, you are going to have to build skills with you and your individual body to make this work.So you are not a checklist, is what I’m saying, you are not a puzzle to be figured out where you have to make sure everything gets put in its proper place and you can’t mess it up. What needs to happen is you need to be willing as a scientist of yourself to go through trial and error.You need to be willing to make mistakes to figure out what makes you work in this area of your life. And y’all, so much of where hypervigilance is coming from is not wanting to make a mistake that might be necessary for you to figure out what’s there.When I tell you the best coaching that happens in my membership with my ladies happens because they come to me with a mistake that they made or something that they failed in.And that it actually gives us beautiful awareness, a golden nugget of why that didn’t work for them and what will do y’all see what I’m saying is that failures and mistakes are the most important information we need.And that only happens […0.6s] when you’re willing to lean back and sit in this journey for the long haul, and really create long term results rather than burning yourself out from trying to not make mistakes. See what I mean?So I want you to understand that flawless performance isn’t required to create a result you want. We just need feedback along the way. And this can be a really good reminder if you find yourself leaning forward or putting too much effort and focus into an area.So what I want you guys to know is that hyper vigilance feels urgent. And if you feel urgent in this area of your life, welcome to being human. I have these things too. We all do. But I want you to understand that this urgency is not gonna get you there quicker. In fact, all it’s gonna do is burn you out.I want you to ground yourself in some intention that you are willing to give this area of your life as much time as it takes in order to do this permanently. I know y’all who are in my programs and get my coaching, that is the intent you have. If you have that intent, get inside our membership.We would love to have you. But I offer any of you listening to position yourself in this way now. Because if you go in being sold on a hyper vigilant approach, you will end up right back where you started. And you will know how that’s true for you.So so we wanna remember the long term goal of healthy eating for is for you to be able to do this naturally, for you to stop picking up and putting this down in your life. So you can actually reap the benefits of it. So you can start living your life.And this means that you have to create a state […0.6s] of […0.5s] solving this area of your life in the state that you will keep it right. Because how you create […0.6s] these healed behaviors is how you will keep them right. If you create it from a state of hypervigilance, that’s what’s necessary to keep them.We need you to approach these changes from a state where you lean back and you actually only give it the attention it needs, not leaning forward all the time and exhausting yourself.You all know, if you’ve listened to me for a long time, I love my […0.5s] garden plant analogies, cause you guys, there’s so many parallels to the work we do here […0.4s] and being a gardener and in this example with hypervigilance, I always like to imagine us as gardeners.And we know I’m not a gardener, but we can imagine that with gardening, it only requires a certain amount of attention for you to give it what it needs, even if your approach as the gardener is not perfect.So what I mean is a gardener knows that pulling out a lawn chair and pulling out binoculars and obsessing over this garden isn’t gonna get it to grow quicker. It’s not gonna provide the gardener any more […0.5s] data with how to best grow the plants. It would be useless. They would just be wasting energy.But this is what so many of y’all are doing when it comes to your food decisions and your weight loss journey. You are consuming more information scrolling social media, listening to endless podcasts without taking action on it.And what it’s doing is it actually is exhausting you and making it so you can’t solve this problem, right.So what we wanna understand is that you need to be protective with your focus […0.4s] and your energy as someone who is highly intelligent and intellectual, it is gonna be a muscle you need to build where you have constraint with the amount of focus you put towards something, be deliberate about it.Evaluate weekly, actually set aside time when you allow yourself to think about solving this problem and build those skills from there. So I hope there was something you took away from this.This was a bit more of a rant, but this is a point of healing that is so huge. If you wanna solve this problem, and again, if you want a very clean process to create these results now does not matter where you’re starting from, go to cat rentas com forward slash membership, get inside. I will coach your face off.We will welcome you in with open arms, and I hope to see y’all there. Alright, love y’all so much. I will talk to you soon.