The Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast

BEE #139: How Identity-Based Habits Lead to Sustainable Change

• Kristin Jones

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Can you imagine a life where food is simply fuel, not a source of stress or guilt? On this episode of the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast, we dive deep into the power of identity-based habits – a revolutionary approach inspired by James Clear's "Atomic Habits."

Forget restrictive diets and unsustainable changes. We'll uncover how aligning your self-talk with the person you want to be can unlock lasting transformation.

Inside this episode, you'll discover:

  • The surprising connection between your identity and your eating habits.
  • Simple strategies to shift your self-talk and build new, empowering beliefs.
  • Why gradual, sustainable changes are key to long-term success.
  • How to overcome the urge for instant gratification and embrace the journey.
  • A sneak peek into future episodes on habit stacking and non-food rewards.

Listen now and start your journey to lasting transformation.

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Connect with me online:

1. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakthroughemotionaleating/
2. You Tube channel, Kristin Jones Coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@KristinJonesCoaching44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com

If you want to learn more about a non-diet approach to weight loss, get my FREE Stop Dieting Guide. Go to https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/stop-dieting-guide

Needing more specific and direct support for your emotional eating and overeating? Check out my online course, Stop Dieting Start Feeling, and my personalized coaching program, Breakthrough To You.

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Speaker 1:

Do you want to lose weight but struggle to stay committed to a meal plan because you constantly feel hungry? Does food provide you comfort when you are bored, angry, lonely or sad? If so, you are in the right place. My name is Kristen Jones and I'm a life coach specializing in emotional eating and weight loss, and I'm also a lifelong emotional eater. I want to provide you with information, motivation and support so you, too, can learn to manage your issues with food and develop a healthy relationship with yourself. Welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. Hi and welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast. My name is Kristen Jones and thank you so much for joining me this week.

Speaker 1:

Being that it's new year, it is a time where people are oftentimes want to make big, huge, sweeping changes to their lives, and I will be honest and say that one of the things that I've been talking about in my yoga classes and in my fitness classes that I teach is that I am not a huge advocate of that. I'm not a huge advocate of New Year's resolutions and I'm not an advocate, in any way, shape or form, of making huge, dramatic, sweeping changes in your life. I do not think they work, and I know they don't work because your brain doesn't operate that way. They work, and I know they don't work because your brain doesn't operate that way. Your brain does not like change and anything that is dramatic, that is drastic and moves you out of your normal routine. Your brain is going to fight against and it will do everything it possibly can to make you go back to the way you originally were. Whether it's healthy or not, it doesn't matter. Your brain doesn't care. It just wants you to stay the same. So, knowing that information, when it comes to making changes or and there's never anything wrong with making changes it's not that I'm against people changing. In fact I am. I am, I'm a huge supporter of that and in fact, I think if we are stagnant and we don't grow and change, that it just it leaves us stuck in our lives and can create a lot of unhappiness in our lives. So it's really, it really is important. If you feel like there's something that you want to work on and you want to change, you absolutely want to be able to do that and you want to be make those changes as necessary. But, with that said, it is so important to go about it in a way that actually is going to get, not necessarily the way you want to create change, and there's a different way of creating change. Now, I am a researcher. I study things, I read things.

Speaker 1:

I did not create this concept and I will not take credit for this concept. I will give credit where credit is due. This concept it was originally put forth by James Clear, who wrote the New York Times bestselling book Atomic Habits, and in his book he proposes that the regular way that people go about creating change is by changing habits and then, over time, by doing the habits day in and day out and repeating those habits, they become a part of your routine. And once you have that routine established, in theory that change is supposed to be established. And he pushes against that and says actually what people do is the exact opposite of what we should be doing. And so what he and what I'm going to talk about today, what he proposes and I have seen this be very successful is creating identity-based habits for change. So instead of saying I'm going to do these habits and then, over time, I'm going to do them and then I'm going to create a change and that change is going to become a part of my lifestyle and then that lifestyle will then change my identity. Instead, he says, you do it backwards. Instead, you decide your identity first who do you want to become and then slowly start to adopt habits that are based upon the new identity that you want to have, based upon the new identity that you want to have, and that you then start proving that you are adopting that identity by doing these small habits and having these small successes and wins, and that reinforces to your identity that that is, in fact, who you are. So it's a very, very interesting concept and it really it. It kind of just flips the whole uh, habit, habit formation and change theorem on its ear. So it's and it's really, it's actually quite exciting, and so it really is something that is very, um, very doable and it makes sense when we talk about it.

Speaker 1:

So how do you go about doing this? Well, the first thing is you have to decide okay, so what area of my life do I want to change? What is the thing in my life that needs to be changed? And since this is the Breakthrough Emotional Eating group and this is the Breakthrough Emotional Eating podcast, it makes sense that it would have something to do with your eating. So I'm going to just propose that, say that the identity change is.

Speaker 1:

Or the change that we want is we want to change our relationship with food. We want to only eat when we're hungry. That's what I will say. Is that that when somebody only uses food as a source of nutrition, you can enjoy it, but you don't use it to soothe. So that that changes. I want to change my relationship with food and I want it. I want, I want food to become the thing that just sustains me, gets me through the day, provides me with energy, and it's no longer the thing that I rely on. It's no longer the crutch, it's no longer the comforter.

Speaker 1:

So when you think about like okay, traditionally we would think about and say, okay, well, what habits do we need to start adopting? Let's not do that. Let's instead look at what is the identity that we want to become? So we want to become a person who is uses food for sustenance and enjoys it, but that's it. So that is the identity that we want to take on. That's the identity. And so what are the habits that a person who decides that I'm going to change my identity from being a person who turns to food when they need support, when they need emotional comfort, when they want to avoid things. Instead, I'm going to be that person who only eats when I'm hungry and only eats for sustenance. I enjoy it, but that's it. It's not for any other purpose. I use food for what it's for.

Speaker 1:

So when we make that decision, that that's the new identity it then becomes, and it begs the question, and the questions then start to be as you move through your day and you are presented with opportunities to use food to comfort you, to use food in a way that you have in the past. That's, when you stop yourself and you say how would a person who only eats to survive, how would they respond when somebody says something that upsets them and they want to go eat something? What would they do instead? What would that person do? That person with that identity? That's what you want to start thinking about, and maybe, so maybe, in that case, it's what would that person do? Well, that person might call somebody and talk it out and say, oh my gosh, this is what happened. I'm so upset.

Speaker 1:

Instead of just automatically turning to food, I'm going to find somebody. I'm going to find a resource. That's what that person does, a person who only uses food for what it's meant for and not for a comfort actually seeks out a resource, seeks out somebody to talk to instead of turning to food. Okay, we did that. That's one win. Okay, that's a win that proves to us that we've done something, that we can adopt that habit or that skill and that becomes that habit. Is there Now? Is the habit ingrained? Absolutely not. But we recognize that victory and we take it and we say, okay, that's something to build on.

Speaker 1:

So the next time they're presented with another opportunity to want to go in because somebody said something that really upset them and they want to go in and they want to eat everything in the refrigerator, again, it's that wait a minute, what would a person who just uses food for something? What would they do? How would they handle things? Well, maybe what they would do is they would journal about it, or maybe they would actually talk to the person that they're having an issue with. Imagine that They'd talk to the person they're having an issue with and they'd actually have some communication. Maybe that's what they would do. But again, it's learning and figuring out. Okay, if I'm going to take on this identity, what does that identity look like and what are the habits. So one of the habits that we've already established is that they turned to a friend, they get a resource, they talk to somebody about something. Another habit that they have is they actually maybe communicate with the person that they're having issues with. And so, again, you can see that not only are now they are establishing these habits, but they're reinforcing them. They're reinforcing their identity, this new identity, and all the while they're telling their brain that this is who they are now.

Speaker 1:

How many times have you told yourself something that you knew was going to hold you back, but you did it to make yourself feel better? How many times have you said, oh, I just can't lose weight because I've got a slow metabolism or I've got that thyroid issue. I can't lose weight because that makes you feel better. But what it actually does is it reinforces with your brain that, yeah, you can't lose weight. That's all your brain hears. It doesn't care about your thyroid, it doesn't care about about any of that other stuff. It just cares about you saying, yeah, but I can't lose weight, and it says, okay, you're right, you can't, and so you're you. We want you to. Your brain always wants you to be right, so your brain is going to go along with that all the time.

Speaker 1:

So we have to be really careful. It's kind of that double-edged sword. We have to be very, very careful about what we say, because our brain hears that and it listens to everything we say and it does exactly what we say, that we are so your identity. You have to be very, very careful about how you speak about yourself and how you speak about this identity that you want to take on. But the identity and the identity that you've decided to take on, every time you do one of those habits, you're reinforcing with your brain and with yourself that this is your new identity, and then you become that person and the habits just fall into place. It's pretty stinking amazing. It really is quite amazing the way um James Clear has kind of has laid all of this out.

Speaker 1:

Now, is it going to happen overnight? Absolutely not, absolutely not, because no change happens overnight. And what we get frustrated by is that identity is not something that changes from one day to the next. It's not like you all of a sudden wake up and you have this new identity, and so, like most of us, when we make a change, we want it to happen yesterday. We want that change to happen like it should have happened, because I thought about it and that's just not how it works. And so, unfortunately for most people, because they don't have that, they don't see the identity change right away. They immediately get frustrated and they're like, oh, this isn't working. This isn't working, I should just go back to the way I am, back, the way things were, and they just kind of push things aside. And so I encourage you to not be so quick to say, oh no, it's, it's, it's not working, because identity is not something that is going to just show itself. It's going to be a process and it's going to take time.

Speaker 1:

But with each of those habits that you adopt, each of those things that you do, each time you ask that question of what would a person who is fill in the blank, whatever the changes that you want to have happen, whenever you ask yourself that, and then you actually do something based upon, whenever you ask yourself that, and then you actually do something based upon what you think that person would do, you are taking a step in the direction of solidifying that as your new identity. What we tell ourselves is who we become, and so, if you want to be a person who has a good relationship with food, who can lose weight and keep it off, you have to tell yourself I am that person, and then you have to start doing things to prove to yourself that you are that person and to prove that those identity, that identity, is actually becoming ingrained. I hope that makes a sense. It really is something that it is. It's so counter to anything that we have ever been taught or anything that we are ever shown, and so it really is a game changer. But again and James Clear talks about this a lot Change is not something that happens overnight, and for most of us, because of this thing that I'm sitting on right now technology.

Speaker 1:

Because of technology, like, we want change to happen, like in an instant. I mean, how many of you go to click on a website and if it doesn't pop up right away, you're like okay, let me check, is my, is my internet working? Okay, there's something wrong Like it. Like, if we get any sort of delay, we just we can't tolerate it. We cannot tolerate it, and that is part of our problem is that we want that instant. I want change to happen. I want it to happen now, and that is not reality and that's not how it's ever going to go.

Speaker 1:

And so changing and altering your expectations about how quickly things are going to happen is extremely important because, again, when it doesn't happen right away and you start telling yourself, oh, this was a stupid idea, this isn't going to work, this is dumb. Yeah, it's not going to work because your brain is going to go, no, she told me it wasn't going to work, so it's not going to work. It's not going to work and I'm going to make sure it's not going to work. So we have, again, we have to be very, very careful to not allow, to not put ourselves in the position of automatically sabotaging ourselves, especially when it becomes to these changes that we know we want to make. Okay, all right, I hope that that this is a very and I'm going to be talking about identity I'm going to. This is a.

Speaker 1:

This is just the beginning of a series on how do we create these habits, just because, again, it's January. So how do we create habits that that, that last, you know how do we create first. You know, we're now talking about the identity based habits. Next week We'll be talking about, or in the next few weeks, we'll be talking about how to stack, how to habit stack. How do you create a habit that is associated with something that you already do automatically? That's a really cool way of adding a new habit. How do you have a reward system set up for your new habits that don't involve food?

Speaker 1:

And so all of these things, they're all so important because change if we're not again, if we're not changing we're, we're, we're dying. So we have to. We have to put ourselves in a position of being able to grow and change and learn and develop and become the best versions of ourselves, because we want to. But how do we go about doing that while still building ourselves up and keeping our self-esteem high and really living the lives that we want to live? That's what this is all about. I mean, yes, are we here to have a better relationship with food and to lose weight? Absolutely, but it's not as simple as like. Okay, I just want to make that happen. There are so many other layers to this whole thing, because we are not simple creatures. We are complex and we have to look at all the areas before we take on any sort of change that we want to have. All right.

Speaker 1:

So, again, moving forward, there will be subsequent podcasts in relationship to identity and habits and how do we go about creating those habits and then how do we actually do them so they actually stick and how do we reward ourselves, because, like anything else, human beings respond to reward. So we'll be talking about those in the future. So hope this podcast was this episode was helpful and, if it was, if you would be ever so kind to leave a review and on the on the platform that you've listened to, that would be so greatly helpful and I really appreciate you spending your time. So, again, lots of other episodes to look at and to listen to, but we'll be coming back next week and in the subsequent weeks in January to talk more about habits and habit formation. All right, we'll see you next week. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you would like to learn how to lose the weight you want and understand and manage your emotional eating, sign up for my free Stop Dieting 5-Step Guide. Go to wwwKristenJonesCoachingcom that's K-R-I-S-T-I-N-JonesCoachingcom, and click the stop dieting guide button.