Do Less. A Harm Reduction Guide for (not) Bingeing on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is America’s normalized day for bingeing.  So, for those of us with eating disorders (active or recovered) or disordered eating habits, or let’s be real anyone. All of us could benefit from a harm reduction guide for navigating this Thanksgiving. We got this!

1.      Plan. Make a plan, any plan. Decide what your bottom lines are non-negotiables, green light foods and recovery behaviors are going to be.  Equally important, decide what you aren’t going to do: top 5 red light foods and stay away from behaviors. It is imperative that the planning is done in advance, think through the day; what may be challenging, possible triggers and then plan for how you will cope effectively with them. If you haven’t decided about the pie situation before you arrive, it will be exactly that… a situation.

Examples:

·      I am going to eat a balanced breakfast, only veggies for apps, fill my plate with protein and veggies and then a bite or two of stuffing and mashed potatoes.  If I want more, I will use my harm reduction plan to eat more veggies and check in with myself.

·      I am going to have whatever meal I want and no desserts.

·      I am going to focus on connecting and enjoying my company rather than the food. (And also have a plan for the food)

·      No purging no matter what

·      One plate, no dessert

*Most importantly, have a plan, think about it and visualize what you want to have happen and then you will be much more successful at being skillful than showing up and winging it. *

 2.     Meal regulate throughout the day. Eat every 3.5-4 hours. Eat a balanced breakfast and snacks throughout the day instead of “saving up” by not eating all day.  This is problematic for several reasons, mainly every restriction inevitably leads to a binge, and it gives false rationalization for eating in ways you aren’t going to feel good about later.  When you show up to a meal after not eating all day it is go time and for most people a set up for not wise minded food choices and impulsivity. You can still eat whatever you want to eat at Thanksgiving, you will just be much more conscious when deciding.

3.     Separate. Know your Apparently Irrelevant Behaviors (AIB’s) when you hear them. Its Holiday season, they are coming for you. In Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) we learn about, and look out for AIBs to help cope ahead with tricky impulsive or mood dependent behaviors. You may have guessed it; they are NOT irrelevant.  I always tell my clients the road to relapse is paved with AIBs.  The biggest problem with eating disorders is they speak to you in your own voice. If you can recognize exactly what it sounds like you can separate it and challenge it before you feel possessed.  The most common offenders are usually thoughts you think often, small seemingly innocuous thoughts that lead to you saying, “eff it, I’m going for it!” but later feel shame or regret.

Here are a few examples:

“It’s Thanksgiving!”

“I don’t want to be extra/high maintenance- it is tradition.”

“I haven’t eaten all day, so this is basically my one meal so…”

“I will make up for it tomorrow.”

“I will only have one”

“I need it, if you had my family, you would too.”

“I ran this morning so I can …”

Here’s the dirty truth about disordered eating, whatever circumstances you are dealing with that may be challenging, there isn’t any binge/shame cycle that isn’t just going to make it worse. The emotional eating rarely delivers on its promise and over time leads to a gnarly shame cycle that is very destructive and hard to get out of.

 4.     Tell the Truth to yourself about yourself. Have a mantra and use it, often. It is also helpful to call a spade a spade, when you hear the seductive sale of how good this will be/feel/taste, call it. It won’t be, it hasn’t been and it’s not going to be. For most of us that pre-problematic, romanticized “this is going to be fun” part doesn’t exist anymore. If what you need is connection or to let go and feel free, it doesn’t matter what that eating disorder says it can’t give you that, it works well to identify what you actually need and what the food is masking.

“There is always tomorrow, I am just not going to do eat this today.”

“This is just another Thursday.” 

“Just one meal”

“I can do this”

5.     Connection. Have an accountability buddy.  Recruit a friend or family member you can do this with. Decide and commit to each other your plan. Then check in about how you are doing/how you did.  Practice the hard stuff in advance.  If you are someone who has “enjoyed” holidays and celebrated with food in the past and you are anxious about navigating not eating sugar this year, know what you are going to say to family and friends in advance (i.e. I am doing a 30 day sugar detox, I had an allergy and dermatologist suggested I avoid sugar, I am full maybe later).

6.     Do less.  Ideally you want to have a solid plan and commit to following it 100% but its food and we are not perfect so having a harm reduction plan is key to succeeding here. If you slip up and fall off your scheduling programming, keep it moving. Sometimes being skillful is how quickly you recover from and forgive yourself for not being skillful.  It all counts.

7.     Urge Surfing. Just sit there. When you notice yourself veering from your plans, feeling strong cravings in a moment remember they will pass it. Cravings are episodic and will come and go. If you can distract yourself for 15-20 mins, they will pass all on their own.  Have a little coping kit of 3 things you will try first, before giving into the craving.

Go wash your hands in the bathroom.

Take 5 deep breaths.

Call a friend

Drink some cold water

Say your mantra

Sit on your hands.

8.     Be Kind.  You are doing your best. Navigating recovery and food is hard, it won’t be perfect.  Stay connected to your wise mind and don’t abandon yourself. When you cruise through Thanksgiving like a skillful badass, remember to be just as diligent on the day after Thanksgiving, see #1 again! We can do this.

I’m Terrible, Thanks for asking…

Am I right?  Is this the worst month yet?  I can’t complain as I have all the “life” things to be grateful for: beautiful healthy kids, a wonderful partner and a job that I love.  But it is the worst month yet isn’t it?

I have been talking a lot this summer about how to get through this next stretch of awful, and there is a certain piece of clinical naiveté when it comes to these unprecedented times, as well as, in general not gas lighting people or being invalidating about how tough being a human is right now.  I wish I had a skill for it, which of course I do, but that is for later. For now, can we just acknowledge we have hit the worst of the worse and are still here, fighting the good fight, but also the reason it has felt so hard is because it is. You are not alone, this is crazy, and we are going to get through this. Somehow.

Not to make it about me but also just so you know, my family moved, and within the first month our fridge and dishwasher both broke within a week of each other.  Having two kids under 4 and no fridge or dishwasher is literally such a perfect depiction of life right now. Here’s what we can do:

1.     Validate and be kind.  This is just that hard.  This being life, our current economic and political climate, the amount of heat and humidity that make being outside almost unbearable.  These are all vulnerability factors that make doing the day harder.  Throw on top the last 2 years of isolation and whatever COVID-isms you have picked up and we are starting with a cup that is not full, not half full, and we are thirsty.

2.     Don’t make it worse- When you don’t know how to make it better just don’t make it worse. Making it worse is being critical and hard on yourself for having a hard time, expecting impossible things from yourself or coping in ways that lead to shame or self-destruction that make reality worse.

3.     Don’t try too hard to make it better- here we are guys. Don’t make it worse but also don’t invalidate the struggle with a walk around the block or a whole30 to change the state of the world.  Don’t approach change by insisting you start a yoga challenge or quick fix solve to a complex multifaceted problem.  When trying to actually change something, be clear and specific and then start small.

4.     Find Joy- Find the things that give you joy, make you smile, or make you feel meaning.  These are tough times, and we must cling to the parts of the story that give us hope and energize our beings. 

5.     Connect- No one isn’t having a hard time.  This is my clinical opinion just speaking from experience.  The life circumstances we have had as a world over the last few years have put us in a unique place to connect to one another.  When someone reaches out, tell the truth about how things are, what you need, where you have found joy and what you are struggling with.

Tips for day-to-day coping:

1.     Wake up and have an uninterrupted mindful minute. The way we start the day matters

2.     Get enough sleep

3.     Set some limits around work and with your screens and stick to them. (Not having work email/slack on your phone, having a time when you stop checking email, taking 30 mins and going phoneless.)

4.     Make a daily goal of something specific that will have an impact on your mood. (I’ve done “No complaining” for several days and it makes a huge difference).

Reassurance Mantra: This will end. This is temporary.  I can handle this.

Energy, Burnout and the Myth of Balance: Surviving in the Pandemic Workforce

If you are noticing your employee’s seem burned-out, resentful, unsettled, or apathetic it’s probably because they are. To effectively re-energize the workforce, we need to shift the focus from getting more out of people, to investing more in them.  When they are motivated and feel valued, is when they can bring more energy and show up as more of themselves.

Reports say it is an “employee’s market” … not according to employees.

The things we are forced to choose between as American workers have been shifting since early 2000 but since the pandemic, the job market and work culture have led to the highest burnout rates we have ever seen. People are choosing their next job not for the work, but for the benefits, the culture, and the kind of manager they have.  The pandemic has tilted the work life balance beyond what the market can stand, and people are fully leaving the workforce without jobs lined up to break free and reset.  Time is finite and workers are desperate to get more of it.  The problem with money is we can’t take it with us, and if we could no one could pay enough for what the tradeoff is.

I am hearing things daily like:

“My job consumes everything,”

“I don’t even know what I like to do anymore,”

“I don’t have time for the things that really matter.”

My practice is made up of all types of demographics, from high level executives to direct workers, across the board the topic is burnout, unrealistic expectations, and work life imbalance.  Coming from someone who works for themselves, I understand it is not as black and white as this article may sound, and that job security and feeding our families is not a lighthearted topic nor one that has any one solution. This article is to highlight a BIG problem that needs even bigger solutions and some tips for managing in the meantime. 

 If you are an employee here what you need to know:

1.     Balance is a Myth. This is your life, there is never going to be balance. Figure out what’s important to you in your life and then prioritize little things every day that you can show up for.  This could be taking a FaceTime call with your grandson in the middle of the day, leaving the office early to have dinner with your kids or put them to bed 1 night a week. Let yourself be a person first 2 out of the 5 (6, 7) days you are an employee. Small changes can make a big difference.

2.     Turn it off. Decide when you are going to stop taking calls, checking email and slack and then hang it up.  It will all be there for you tomorrow. Find a way to unplug for the day, the work will never be “done”, and you will not be more productive tomorrow or the next day if you are burning it out every night. This type of work is ineffective, leads to resentment and is often, thankless.  Our work is important, we are important but none of it is that important and we need to invest more in our sustained energy and the longevity of our higher selves so we can keep perspective about what matters most and then have our actions align with our values. In short: there needs to be a time when you are not working and not available so you can just be in your life.

3.     Protect Your Energy: NYT article just came out stating that the most valuable commodity for highly successful people is energy.  Sustained energy only exists if we protect it.  Energy is a reciprocated resource, working in an environment of negative burned out people only takes energy. Seeing your kid light up when they see you, or your dog run up and slobber on your pants, moments of shared joy and connection, these are things that give us energy back. An article written in Harvard Business Review in 2007 describes energy in the workforce: 

“Time is a finite resource, but energy is different. It has four wellsprings—the body, emotions, mind, and spirit—and in each, it can be systematically expanded and renewed. For instance, harnessing the body’s ultradian rhythms by taking intermittent breaks restores physical energy. Rejecting the role of a victim and instead viewing events through three hopeful lenses defuses energy-draining negative emotions. Avoiding the constant distractions that technology has introduced increases mental energy. And participating in activities that give you a sense of meaning and purpose boosts the energy of the spirit.”

Quick and Dirty Energy boosts:

1.     No matter what is happening, take 30 mins for lunch. Step away, take a walk, eat a sandwich, breathe.

2.     Push away from your desk and take 3 mins to re-set. Check in with yourself observe your breath, observe anything you are holding onto, consider letting go of it, even just for the present moment.

3.     Jump up and down. Literally.

4.    5-year question. “Does this really matter? Will it matter in 5 months? 5 years?

5.     Have a mantra to help you help your tired burnout self:

“Life is short, this is my life.”

“It is enough, I am enough”

“Nothing crazy is going to happen.”

“I am one human, and this is my life”  

If you are an employer here’s what you need to know:

1.     F@#cking pay me.  At the end of the day people are often motivated by money and success and if you are expecting individuals to trade long hours and endless availability they need to be compensated fairly. Obviously, there are budgets that confine spending but when it is possible, it can make a huge difference.

2.     Acknowledge and Value the effort and its impact on their humanity and life. People are missing family dinner, putting their kids to bed, hanging out with their friends, showing up for special events and significant things daily because of the nature of their work.  The only thing worse than missing these things, is to miss them and for no one to even notice or comment on the work you are doing or its impact. Not to say people need to be constantly validated for everything but when someone is working hard notice them, acknowledge you see the trade in they are making, it makes a difference.

3.     It is still a global pandemic. People have just spent the last 20 months in a compact space managing more than can be expected (especially parents, especially mothers). Don't let that be lost on you. Make room for people to do their jobs efficiently and effectively in ways that work for their unique situation. I am looking at you in office mandates.  Work with people and talk to them, there are ways to make our workforce so much more humane and have direct impacts on quality of life and organization culture.

4.   Numbers don’t lie. There have been countless studies on workers motivation, productivity and general task completion being connected to less billable hours not more. The Corporate Executive Board found that people who have a good work-life balance are 21% more productive. In a Stanford University study from 2019, economics professor John Pencavel found that productivity per hour declines sharply when a person works more than 50 hours a week. “After 55 hours, productivity drops so much that putting in any more hours would be pointless.” Does anyone work 50 hours a week anymore? No.

 Bottom line: everyone has someone they are reporting to. Everyone is managing the best they can in a system that is broken, with no so protections for the quality-of-life factor for any of us.  The Harvard Business Review article quoted at the beginning of this article was published in 2007! We have been talking about this problem for 14 years and it has gotten worse and worse.  Instead of blaming or finger pointing let’s all try and make room for the collective humanity of the workforce. No one wants to be trading this much life in. The best way to influence the behavior and relationships to work for your employees is to model good boundaries and be consistent. It’s going to take a lot to shift the work culture back to a more manageable place and it is going to take everyone moving in that direction, together. 

5 Ways to Mark the New Year Without Totally Invalidating Yourself!

Happy New Year! We made it! Life, you are a lot!

New Year’s Resolutions are quite invalidating considering the very nature of the concept is that we "decide" on changing something and then do it.  Wouldn't that be a blast?! Behavior change is quite complex, and is rarely a discrete or single event; however, we tend to view it in such a way. Change occurs gradually, over time. Change must be intentional and is never easy. In fact, there are only about 15-20% of things we do in our lives that are not habitual, meaning about 80-85% of our behaviors happen automatically.  Deciding to change something that is essentially happening on its own, doesn’t work.  We often have resolutions that are grandiose and global, for example, this year I will finally stop smoking, drinking, lose the extra weight, get healthy, figure out my life, etc. That’s a lot. Resolutions are also often things we feel we “should” change rather than things we are particularly motivated or compelled to change. Considering change is so dang hard we want to make sure we are actually invested in the thing we are changing.

Change is incredibly difficult, and while we often believe we aren’t accomplishing our goals or changing things in our lives because we aren’t trying hard enough, it has very little to do with trying. Things we really want to change about ourselves and are unable to change, is not because we aren’t trying hard enough, but that something is getting in the way- something is wrong. Things unconsciously maintain our behaviors; our behaviors serve functions and often we may not even be aware of what they are. Sometimes the something that is wrong is we are completely missing the mark on the approach to behavior change, particularly around setting SMART goals vs. less effective means such as deciding or white knuckling tactics. Without behavior chain analysis which breaks down behavioral sequences into itemized slices including thoughts, emotions, and actions taken, we really don’t know why or what maintains certain behaviors.  Behaviors are also usually layered, so for example weight loss is not as simple as, “I am going to finally lose the weight,” we must examine the different facets at play. We cannot responsibly target weight loss without talking about our beliefs about ourselves, emotional eating, family of origin behaviors around food, the function food plays associated with escaping distress, numbing discomfort, and masking other emotional challenges.  Then we look at health and healthy weight loss which involves exercise, knowledge of macronutrients and nutrition, all of which require access, resources, and a lot of change.

Science tells us that behavior changes only when we specifically target something and work to shape the behavior incrementally. If you have a big goal or something you really want to change in your life, start with something you can absolutely accomplish.  Be specific and make sure the behavior is measurable.  Make your goals SMART like your phones.

• S- Specific: be as specific and detailed about your goal as possible. Clarity on what exactly we are working towards.
• M- Measurable: We need to be able to track the progress and measure the outcome. How much, how often, how will we know when we have met the mark.
• A- Attainable: The goal must be feasible and achievable. Do we have control/influence over it?
• R- Relevant: The goal must be compelling and feel worthwhile, goals must be meaningful to the person trying to attain them.
• T- Timely: What is a realistic timeframe? Goal will be completed day/week/year.

If you are going to make a New Year’s Resolution make it a SMART one.  Here are some alternatives for marking the New Year.

1. Vision Board- Make a collage of cut outs with images, words, phrases, and designs that capture the essence of what you want to manifest in the year to come. You can do this with friends/family/clients/partners.
2. Write a letter to your future self- Write a letter to yourself next year describing your hopes, wishes, fears, and goals for the new year. Seal the envelope and open it next year on New Year’s Day.
3. Write a letter to your-past-self: Write a letter to your past self, marking all the progress, accomplishments, challenges, connections, and events over the last year. Take note of things you are proud of and things you want to do differently in the New Year.
4. Future Mapping- Map out the next one year with specific benchmarks of things you would like to accomplish.  Look at the different domains of your life; emotional, relational, career, spiritual, physical.  Decipher between short-term and longer-term making the goals SMART and broken down into manageable parts.
5. Intention Setting: Set intentions for the upcoming year in each domain (emotional, relational, career, spiritual, physical).

3 Tools for Self-Fluency and Emotion Regulation: Make Being Human More Manageable

Photo by sydney Rae on Unsplash

There are a lot of things that make emotion regulation difficult.  Likely the most challenging aspect is the unpredictability of the human experience, things we don’t know until we know, and the circular nature of our lived experience and history.  We can be walking along on any given Tuesday, and BAM out of nowhere, a thought, smell, situation, or person, can trigger some historical experience that is like a gut punch to the entire sympathetic nervous system, or fight-or-flight response.  This happens automatically so there is little we can do to prepare and it’s common to short-circuit on skills.  It’s so tricky, because sometimes it can even be something we have “worked through” and presents slightly differently, or exactly the same. I often find myself coaching around reducing vulnerability factors, which helps by making us less vulnerable to impulsivity or reactivity when these moments arise, and it makes sense that when we are walking along and suddenly sideswiped, being skillful can feel almost impossible. 

What can we do then?

1. Mindfulness and Self-Fluency: When we are aware of our baseline, we are aware when our baseline is destabilized. Self-Fluency is a term I like to use to describe the relationship we can create with ourselves, our past, and our understanding of our worldview that makes us “able to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression.” The more connected we are to the notion that we are who we are, and come by it honestly, the more we can make peace with the parts of ourselves that are less desirable. We all have them.

Practice: Checking in with oneself daily, what’s going on for me? How do I feel? How do I feel about that really?  What’s underneath this feeling? How can I make sense of why I am experiencing this a certain way?

2. Cope ahead. Have an “Oh Shit” plan: think in advance about what types of things about a situation or event could be challenging. Plan what you will do, what skills you will use and who you will contact if you encounter these things.  Then visualize yourself going through the motions of your plan and connect to how you will feel after you have exited this challenge skillfully. When we have a plan for how to cope with difficulty our brain has a map for where to go when we don’t have a plan. I call it a dysregulation protocol, it doesn’t always look the same but we can respond to triggers/dysregulation in the same way: Stop, don’t react, breath, and do whatever it takes to regulate.

Practice: Meditate! I know meditation is “trendy” and may feel kind of intangible, but the benefits are insane! For the sake of simplicity here: It gives us more space between thought and action, creates a pause, literally makes it so we can experience things more slowly.  This is especially important when we are triggered as things get unbelievably fast and narrow.

3. Repair and move on. There are times when we are going to just plain miss the mark on being skillful. Whether we try and miss, or the skills don’t work, or we say F*%k that I’m going in (hard).  It’s going to happen and its part of being imperfect and human.  What really gets messy is when we experience shame and self-loathing, while simultaneously not taking ownership of our unskillful behavior because then everyone will know.  This creates dissonance both in our experience and in our self-concept.  For example, when we are wrong or behave poorly, it isn’t a secret.  Avoidance doesn’t change it, justifying it doesn’t change it, and the ironic thing is when we don’t acknowledge and repair, it becomes exponentially more likely that we will repeat the behavior.

Practice: Practice repairing and taking responsibility with small things and safe people.  Accurately describe your experience and self-validate that you are going to make mistakes and screw up and even try to make sense of why it happened based on yourself fluency.  Then move on.