Acceptance vs Resistance

This is the second podcast in a two-part series inspired by my training for an upcoming marathon. Last week we talked about the discomfort that arises when you are working towards a goal that you have never accomplished before.

This week we are looking into the ways that you can respond to the discomfort that arises in those moments when you want to eat a lot of food and how you can support yourself through it.

There are some surprising ways that you might be making that discomfort much worse than it needs to be. Tune in to discover strategies that you can implement for any areas of discomfort in your life as you pursue new goals and dreams.

Additional Resources Referenced:

This episode is part one of this series:

Quitting Ahead of Time

This episode was inspired by the exact same race one year ago:

What Do You Do When Things Get Hard?

Want to know why you struggle with food and what to do next? Start watching The Food Freedom Mini Series today. 

Transcript

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Welcome to Binge Breakthrough, a podcast designed to help you finally break through the barriers that keep you stuck, feeling out of control around food. I'm Master Certified Coach Jane Hoker, and I want you to know that no matter how long you've been struggling or what you've tried, food freedom is possible. And I'm here to show you how. After years of therapy, eating the sports treatment, restrictive diet, and reading all the books, I would still stop in the optical optical cycle of restricting thinking and how I was able to see it all from a new perspective that change everything. Each week I will share the strategies, tools, and mindset that allowed me to overcome my decades-long battle with binge eating. Your journey to body trust starts now. Let's dive in. Hello, trusted listener. Welcome to Binge Breakthrough. I consider you a trusted listener because I trust that you are listening to this podcast for a reason. I trust that you're going to hear something that is insightful and impactful on your journey with food and with life. Okay, so today is the second episode in a two-part series that has been inspired by my upcoming marathon here at the end of April. So last week's episode was called Quitting Ahead of Time. And if you haven't listened to last week's episode, not a problem at all, you do not have to listen to that episode to get value out of this one. But if you haven't, when you're done with this one, be sure that you go back and listen to that one. Or if you want to kind of have the full picture and the full story, you might just hit pause right now, go back and listen to last week's episode, then come and listen to this one. Either way is fine. You're gonna get a lot of great value no matter what. So today, what we're gonna talk about is what do we do with the discomfort that arises any time that you are going to do something different, something that you are taking on a new challenge, maybe a goal, something that hasn't yet been possible for you, but you think this might be possible. I want to create this for myself. So I'm doing, I'm in the process of doing this right now with my goal of qualifying for the Boston Marathon. So I'm running a marathon at the end of this month. And at this marathon, my goal is to run a time that might allow me to register for the Boston Marathon. This time that I am going to need to run is, I believe, it's at the edge of my possibility, of my potential. It might be possible and it might not. Here's what I know for sure it there is going to be discomfort. There is going to be quite a bit of discomfort that is involved in this experience and in achieving, even going after this dream that may or may not be possible for me. So, in preparation for this race, uh, I ran a half marathon. It actually just took place last weekend. And this marathon, this half marathon, was really going to be a key race to know am I on track for my goals for the Eugene marathon? And so, what's actually really interesting, uh, as I was reflecting on this, this exact same race, this exact same half marathon last year inspired the podcast episode, How Do You Handle Discomfort? It's a great episode. And I will be sure to link it in the in the show notes so that you can go back. And but just think to yourself, as you listen to this podcast episode and as you listen to that one, it was the exact same half marathon, just one year apart, that were in these things were inspiring me to come up with these ideas and these content that I share with you all. All right. So for this half marathon this year, my goal was to run this race at my goal marathon pace for the Eugene Marathon. And I knew, as I mentioned in the episode last week, this was gonna be challenging. I believe it's right on the edge of my current ability. So here's what I noticed in the week leading up to the race, I had a lot of uncertainty. There was a, I was thinking a lot, am I gonna be able to do it? I knew it was going to hurt. I knew it was gonna be challenging. I had fear around it. I had this fear around how much, how much discomfort it might be. I had this fear of if I would be able to do it or not. Would it even be possible? What was this going to mean for Eugene and that big goal? And so I mentioned last week on the episode that I often look to sources of knowledge and inspiration for any goal that I am going after. It might be a book, it might be a podcast, it might be talking to other people, or sometimes it's even just a TV show or a movie that I watch. You probably have seen this as I've um shared in some podcast episodes a couple of weeks ago. I shared a podcast episode of inspiration from the show Survivor. I did not turn on Survivor to be like, oh, let me be inspired today. It's mostly just, oh, this is entertaining. I enjoy this show. And every once in a while I'm watching and I'm like, oh, yes, that's so good. I want to take that with me into my day. So here was the inspiration that I came across for this race. I'm reading a book. Uh, this is a hard copy book that I'm reading. It's called Brain Training for Runners. It's a pretty thick, pretty big book. It's by the author Matt Fitzgerald, who interestingly is the actually the same author as the audiobook I mentioned last week. He's a very prolific author. He has written a lot of books. So I was reading this book, Brain Training for Running and or for Runners. And in this book, in one particular part about this book, in this book, he's talking about the concepts of pain versus suffering. And the here's the idea: pain. Pain is going to be there, especially when we're talking about endurance sports and we're talking about pushing yourself to your capability, to what you think is possible. There is absolutely going to be physical discomfort. Some might even say physical pain as you do something that is really pushing you to your limits. So that's pain. But then he distinguishes pain and suffering. So suffering, he talked about the suffering is what we add on top of it. So we're going to have pain no matter what. But we add suffering when we think about how terrible it's going to be. When we add the worry and the anxiety, am I going to be able to do it? Um, I'm not sure what might happen to me. And when we add the fears and the anxieties of what might happen in that pain or what we may or may not be able to handle in the pain. So as I was reading this, I was like, oh, I am adding suffering, worrying about what it would be like. So as I worried about the half marathon and I thought about it, and I thought about the discomfort and how hard it might be and how it might be so hard, I would have to stop and all of these things. I realized I was adding suffering on top of it. So then I started looking at the weather forecast for the weekend. This race was going to be on a Saturday. I'm looking at the forecast, you know, coming up. The weather forecast for Saturday was terrible. It was cold winds, sustained winds of 25 to 35 miles an hour with gusts over 40 miles an hour. And the last three to four miles of the 13.1 mile run were going to primarily be in a headwind. And I was adding more suffering, like, oh, it's going to be so bad. It's going to be so terrible. I wish it wasn't going to be this way. So the night before the race, I opened up the book, This brain training for runners. And I'm like, okay, I want inspiration for this run. And I went back to this book and I read a couple of parts that I had read several times before, but I just wanted some reminders for myself of how I could approach the obstacles that I would sure be sure to face the next day. And as I read about the pain versus suffering, I read he was talking about the importance of leaning into the pain of racing. Like, yes, it is going to be there. Lean into it. Accept that it is going to be a part of your experience. But what we don't want to do is add to the suffering, is add suffering on top of the pain. And we add suffering by being afraid of it. So lean into the pain, accept that the pain's going to be there. But don't add to it. Don't add suffering on top of the pain by being afraid of it or worrying what might happen, worrying that you can't handle it. So I also went into the book and he's got some proprioceptive cues, things that you can, cues that you can think about for your own internal, just cues for your body that I could call upon, that I could use during the race. Then I reminded myself, okay, you have done so many races in the past. What are the kind of key things that help you in the past where you've had successful races? So I remembered and I reflected, I have routines that I really love that get me into a right place. Not a right place, but just the best place for me to be able to lean into pain and really figure out what is possible for me on a day. So one of my routines, I have a meditation. It's a pre-raised meditation that I love to listen to the morning of, just helps put my mind in a really great place. I also reminded myself, I have this kind of mental place that I go to that often just clicks for me when the gun goes off. So I might be kind of nervous, I might be a little uncertain, I might have a lot of, you know, kind of excess energy kind of going through my body. But for me, I have done this enough that when that gun goes off, I kind of have a race mode that I know I can go into and I can remind myself, I have kind of a different level. I will go into that place. So then my strategies, I also have strategies that really help me out. Other strategies for me. I plan my fueling ahead of time. I know this is exactly what I'm gonna take in. I'm gonna do it at these eight stations. Here's what I'm gonna eat beforehand, here's what I'm gonna do after. I pack my recovery drink, all of those things. I plan all of that out ahead of time. During the race, I have a um a tradition of praying during the race. And what I do is I think about other people. I take the attention off of the pain that I'm experiencing and I put it on to really thinking about other people and putting my effort and my energy into them. I have certain physical cues where I think about form. I kind of reminded myself of some of those cues as I was reading the book. I do a lot of internal positive self-talk. I encourage myself. I remind myself to keep things one, sometimes one mile at a time, sometimes one aid station at a time, when things are really challenging. It's like one streetlight at a time. Maybe if there's a hill, it's to the top of the hill. If there's somebody in front of me who's going a little slower, maybe until I reach them. So there are cues that I that I think about, the way that I encourage myself. If I start thinking, oh my gosh, there's no way I could do this for another six miles, seven miles, eight miles, don't think about that. I just remind myself, all you got to do is run the mile you're in, just the next five minutes, just until the next aid station, whatever it is, that little bits of encouragement. I also love thinking about how these challenges apply to other areas of life. You can see that in these podcast episodes. I literally leave these rests, these races. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have such great ideas. Because I think about how they can apply not only to my life, but to the lives of my clients and all of you who are listening to the podcast, who come across any of my content. Sometimes I just have gratitude for what I can do, that I am out there, that I am able to run when so many people are not. And there have been so many times in my life where I haven't been able to run. Like just a few weeks ago, when I was so sick, there was no way I could have done that. I also just have gratitude for my relationships, the work I get to do in the world, my clients. Just gratitude for life and nature. When the pain increases, this is one of my other favorite things. I remind myself, this is where I grow. This right here is where I change my relationship with this discomfort. This is where I lean into the pain without creating more suffering. This is where I discover what's possible. This is where I learn about myself. Whether it works or not, this is where the learning happens. And so during this race, while I was racing, I was really thinking about this concept of acceptance versus resistance. So, what is resistance? Resistance sounds like this. It's gonna hurt. I'm not sure if I can do it. I wish it wasn't going to be so windy. I wish I knew if I could do it, what pace I was gonna be able to sustain. What does acceptance sound like? This is where I figure out what I'm capable of today. Yeah, it's windy. And this wind will help me grow physical and mental resilience. This is my chance to figure out if I can do it. I'm gonna be proud of myself and learn something no matter what happens. Acceptance is like, yeah, this is gonna hurt. It is, and it's how I figure out what I'm capable of. It's how I can really push myself to see where I am and what I'm capable of. So during the race, I had a few moments of my brain thinking it was hard. I can't do it. I heard these whispers of wanting to slow down, and I had these visions of wanting to walk later during the race. So I internally confirmed my commitment. It was like, uh-uh, we are not walking today. That's just not happening. We are not quitting today. My intention was at the end of this race, I wanted to have no regrets. No regrets. This is a common phrase I tell myself while I'm racing. So I asked myself, if I slow down now, will I have regrets later? Immediate answer, yes. So as I voiced internally these commitments, it helped me reinforce what I was there for. I had these internal commitments along with that positive self-talk. You can do this just to the next aid station, one mile at a time. Run the mile you're in. Don't worry about the future miles. When things get really hard, changing my focus, thinking about those other cues. So many different tools I bring on for myself. So overall, the race was pretty amazing. I do not have any regrets about it. The wind, that wind that I mentioned, it was very noticeable. But because I was in acceptance, I was like, yeah, it's windy, I wasn't wishing it was different than it was. I made some clothing decisions because of the wind. I made some changes to my overall race strategy because of the wind, but I never wished that it was different than it was in that moment. And overall, I would say the race went pretty darn well. I was just a little bit off of where I was hoping to be pace-wise, but there were so many more things. I'm not only going to look at pace as a measure of success. I'm gonna look at the way that I overcame, look at the way that I brought in my tools and my resources, and I brought in my past experiences. And I really did not have any regrets. And I leaned in when things got hard. I wasn't wishing they were different. Okay, so we've been talking a lot about running, but how does this apply to binge eating, to eating in ways we may not like sometimes? What does resistance sound like? Resistance sounds like, I wish I didn't have these thoughts. I wish I wasn't just like, here it is again, this desire to go eat all this food. I want this to go away. I hate this feeling. We don't want it to be there. We wish it was gone. We don't like it. We're resisting it. What does acceptance sound like? Ah, here you are. I knew this would, I figured this would come. This is the, this is that time. This is the time after dinner where I just want to eat all the food. This is the time on Sunday when I start thinking about going back to work tomorrow when I just want to eat all the food. Like, oh, here you are. Resistance. When we're in resistance, it's like this is when we go into willpower. I'm not gonna eat, I'm not gonna do it. We're pushing, we're we're pushing against what's there. It makes it bigger, it makes it worse, it makes it more scary. It's that analogy that I've used in the past of like pushing that beach ball underwater. We just push it down, we push it down. No, no, no. I don't want this to be here. But what's gonna happen at some point? That beach ball is gonna fly right out of that water because it's now so much bigger. It's adding suffering on top of the pain. Yes, the desire to eat a bunch of food is uncomfortable. But guess what? We add so much more discomfort when we think, I wish this wasn't here. I hate that I that I do this. I hate that this is here. We resist it. We want it to be gone. We're adding that suffering on top. When we accept, it's like, oh, here you are. I knew you were gonna be here. It softens us. Then we can make a plan. We can adjust our strategy, we can meet ourselves where we are. Okay, so what's the practical application? What do we do with this? It's so important for you to know your patterns. Remember, I talk about so often awareness is the first step to change. So if you know that you typically binge at night after the kids go to bed, or you binge on Sundays before you go back to work, or for me, my old patterns was Monday afternoons. Maybe you're somebody who um, before you pick up the kids at school, you're driving around to the drive-thru, maybe on your way home from work, whatever. You know your patterns. Start by anticipating what might come up. These are your anticipating your obstacles. Now we're gonna make a plan. We don't just wish it wouldn't happen or get mad and frustrated when it does. We want to think about how you can support yourself when it happens. What can you change in your pattern? If you're somebody who usually eats a lot at night, it might be there's a very large correlation with this. So it might be you simply need to eat more food during the day. You might, if you're somebody who struggles, like say it's the Sunday night eating, make sure you have plenty of time to do things that you love on the weekends. Make sure that you're planning, calming, connecting, and restorative activities. Make sure you're not increasing your internal stressors with things like too much screen time and not enough sleep. Know your patterns, anticipate your obstacles, make a plan for how you can support your. All right. So as we wrap up here, I want you to get curious for yourself. Where are you in resistance? Specifically as it relates to what's happening for you around food? Where are you wishing things were different than they are? And then the next question is this what might be different if you shifted into acceptance? Now remember, you don't have to like it. I did not like that wind. But if it is your experience, if I am running a marathon, half marathon in 30 mile an hour winds, then open up to it. If experiencing these overwhelming desire to eat a lot of food, open up to it, accept it. Ask yourself how you can nurture and support yourself through it. Just wishing it would go away or wishing it would be different than it is often makes it worse. So the question is this what might change for you if you soften to it, open up to it, meet yourself where you are, and then employ the strategies that you need to overcome these challenges that arise. Think about during my race, there were so many strategies I employed during the race. It's not just enough to be like, oh yeah, there's going to be pain. We have to figure out what are the strategies? What am I going to do when the discomfort comes? These are the types of things, these strategies, these tools. How do we open up to this discomfort? This is what I work on with my clients. This is what we do together we create these strategies, these tools, these things you draw on that you know work for you. There are not very many people I know of. I know a lot of runners. I'm about the only one I know that prays while I run, and that actually helps. It helps me a lot. Everybody else is like, I don't know how you do that. My husband is always saying, I don't know how you're actually thinking about ideas for podcasts and ideas for your clients while you're running. Like, I don't either. But it works for me. So it's so important to figure out your own tools and strategies. Remember, every time you overcome an obstacle, you are developing resilience. You're learning and growing and gaining information and strength for the next challenge. This is the process of continual improvement, the process of life as a human. We have challenges, we face obstacles, we learn from them. And if we are willing to see these as opportunities for growth, we make changes and adjustments as we learn how to better support ourselves and other people. Even when we show up in ways we don't want to, we can practice acceptance even then. Even in those moments, you eat a lot of food. We won't ever always show up in the ways we want. Whether that's around food, whether it's around something else. We can accept that. And then we can apply these skills of having a plan of what to do when that happens, when we show up in ways we don't want. And we meet ourselves where we are and we adapt and we adjust as needed. So my question for you is where can you practice acceptance this week? I invite you to try it on. Try on this concept of accepting your situation, accepting where your mind and your body wants to go with food. Just try it on. You can always go back to resistance if this approach of acceptance doesn't work for you. And if you want help in figuring out tools and strategies for dealing with this discomfort when it arises, when it arises, reach out. I would love to help you figure this out. This is possible. Change is possible. And here's what's amazing: you will never run out of opportunities to practice the idea of acceptance versus resistance. So just get curious. Where am I in resistance? Where can I soften? Where can I open up and accept and make some shifts that are more supportive for where I am right here, right now? All right, that's what I have for you today. I'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to Binge Breakthrough. If you would like personalized guidance, insight, and support to implement the tools, skills, and concepts you are learning on this podcast. I have just what you need. Cultivate an entirely new relationship with yourself and with food. Alongside other women who know and understand your struggles. Coaching, connection, and change are waiting for you. Spots are limited, so sign up today. Find out more at janepoker.com forward slash cultivate.