Take Responsibility For Your Choices

Have you ever turned to food when you were feeling sad, mad, bad or glad? In this episode, we cover how owning your struggle with food is the first step to moving past it. Regardless of whether emotional eating has always been a part of your life, or if it was triggered by recent events, there is always a way out (P.S. it should not involve 10 billion years of therapy). You're not a failure. You're not a loser. You're a powerful woman on a journey of self-discovery. Are you ready to Ditch the Diet and lose weight for life? Let's go!

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Transcript

What is up you gorgeous, fabulous creatures and welcome inside of the Losing It podcast. You are here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach. And today we are diving into a truth that, listen, most of us, honey, we just want to damn well ignore it.

(0:13 - 1:31)

Because we like to think that our shitty lives and our body that we're so dissatisfied with, and the relationship with food that we absolutely hate is somebody else's fault, but not ours. So we are talking about taking responsibility for your choices fully, unapologetically, completely, and how when I actually finally did that, that was the turning point in my life. That is when I was finally able to stop emotional eating and start losing weight.

Because here's the thing. Oh, babe, your identity is not something you were born with. It is something that you actually build one tiny action at a time.

So in this episode today, I'm going to show you how those really small shifts in behavior can rewire your brain in really big ways. Because when you reshape yourself image, that's how we're going to radically transform your body, your body shape, and the way you interact with food. I mean, now, we're not talking about motivation, and we're not talking about willpower.

We are talking about what goes on in your brain space. When you believe that you are this particular person that you think you are right now, and it all starts with one thing, you want to change the way you think about yourself, you've got to take radical responsibility for your choices. So let's dive in.

(1:31 - 4:45)

So honey, we're kicking off today with a bit of Q&A. I've got some questions that have been sent in by some of my listeners, some of my listeners, well, some of you have sent in some questions. You want to know a little bit more about my background.

So I'm going to share how I got started in creating this business that I have been doing now for 10 years, and how I got to the point where I am in my life as well. So the way I really ended up finding this path as Australia's emotional eating coach was, I have an underlying training in I've got health coaching, training and certification, then I am a certified weight loss nutritionist. Or I can't remember the exact title.

Nutrition and weight loss. I don't remember. That's how I started.

And it's fabulous. But what actually happened was after I finished all my studies, I leapt out of the gates and shot down the shot down the runway. And I started in the general health coaching space.

Look, let me show you some smoothies and here's some things that we should all just eat healthy, like, you know, leave on walnuts and alfalfa sprouts was fabulous. And it was good at the time, I felt really great about it. But I went away and had a mastermind with a few other coaches, highly strategic coaches from around Australia.

And one of them actually, I think a few of them pulled me aside and they said, Listen, we get what you're doing. And we like the vibe. But we don't think you're actually being fully authentic with yourself or your audience.

Because they only had to spend a short amount of time with me. I mean, we went away to different states about once every couple of months, we chose a different state around the country. And you know, we all flew over there to catch up because we're coming from different locales.

So they said, Listen, we know we see what you're doing. And it's very cute. And, you know, we like do like a good smoothie moment.

But we understand that you've also got this history with yo-yo dieting. And we see you like acting really crazy with food. You're always worried.

It looks like you're always worrying and stressing about how much you're eating and where are we eating. And they basically just called me out on my BS and said, If you've got issues with emotional eating, like why don't you just do that and go in on that. And that's exactly what I decided to do.

So basically, I turned the thing that I was fully ashamed of and was trying to keep a secret into my message. I was authentic, I stepped into my authenticity, I stopped trying to hide from who I was and stepped into who I was. So it was a way for me to let go of the shame.

Yes. But I share this with you, because I want you to know that if you're feeling that way to constantly worrying and stressing about food, always feeling like you can't, even if you don't want to count calories, you really can't stop, you only have to look at a 90, throw some cheese and a carrot, you know, slice of ham on there, 175. Like your brain is adding that shit up and you don't even want it to.

I truly felt like chocolate had a Wi-Fi connection to my brain. That's what I thought. But you know, when we're given the right tools and the right strategies to implement, it's all deal with-able.

It's like, you can deal with any of it. And I'm not going to say that it's fixable because you would never fking broken to start with. So another question that has come through and it's comes through quite frequently, is some of you wanting to know a little bit more about my history in terms of emotional eating.

(4:46 - 13:49)

Where do I even start? As I said, it was my deepest, darkest secret. And I was really ashamed of it. And I hid it from everybody, my family, everybody, like I just didn't even want to admit it to myself.

So I was emotional eating from the time I was really, really young. And the term emotional eating wasn't even around back then. I mean, we're talking sort of probably prior to 10 years old.

I would eat chocolates until I was physically sick. So I would just stuff them down my mouth until I was physically ill. And there was no off switch for me.

I didn't have that part of my brain that went, okay, that's enough now. I just felt like I couldn't stop. So it started from really young, went all the way through into my teenage years, and then my adulthood.

So of course, when you're a young child, very often weight is not an issue at that point. You're usually pretty young, burning a lot of calories. But in my teenage years, honey, those hormones kicked in, the metabolism changed, it all changed.

And food became my everything. There was no other way that I knew how to deal with feelings of being acceptable or unacceptable. I would just turn to food.

It was my comfort, it was my friend, it was the one thing that wouldn't judge me. Even though as a result of eating that food, I felt judged, I would then turn right back to the food to deal with the judgment. So for the longest time, I truly didn't know what I was doing or why I was doing it.

There was no name to put to the actions that I was carrying out. So I really felt stuck. And that, of course, was the gateway into the world of dieting.

I was all up in there with the Herbalifes and the Shakes and the Jennys and the WWs, and I was doing all of it, all of it. I mean, just shy of getting psychological help. There was nothing that I didn't try, because I just felt like the biggest failure in the world.

But every time that I was sad or upset or any kind of emotion, I would stuff my face to celebrate. I would stuff my face to commiserate. And it's just like, I felt like an entire, I just felt like an enormous, giant failure at everything in life.

My parents saw that I had potential in art and artistic avenues, and they were encouraging me to go into that. But I didn't really want to do that. I was a bit scared.

So I didn't do anything. And from that time onwards, I mean, when I say I didn't do anything, I went ahead and I got a job and it was all fine. But my brother, I feel like, we always laugh, and I call him the golden child.

He was the one that went to uni. He was the one that got the great career. I feel like I was the massive disappointment, and I ate my way through that.

It was so much more than me feeling like what I chose to do in my life wasn't good enough. I felt that I wasn't good enough, and I would never be good enough. So the vicious cycle just continued and continued.

I would go on soothing myself with chocolate, hating myself even more, stuffing my face with doughnuts. So, you know, it's a really challenging situation, especially for women, which is why it's so incredibly important for you to know that you're not alone. Honey, you are not alone.

This behaviour that we despise so much is so normal, it's embarrassing that we don't talk about it more. I mean, as females, especially, we live such stressful lives. It's pretty much just how it continues to roll out.

There is so much demanded of us. All the duties of like the 1930s and 40s that were expected of women are still pretty much expected of females to care for the home, make the dinners, cook, clean, raise the children. And it's also fully, fully expected now that you should have a full-time job, but not a man.

It's not in no way even remotely expected of the man that he would spend every waking minute cooking, cleaning, preparing meals, dealing with bills, running children around to places, like that's pretty much still supposed to be, usually, expected to be the female's job, plus her full-time position in the workplace. That is just how it is. Now, listen, we are incredible and we do have the ability to multitask, but honey, fk, I mean, at some point, at some point, we do need a break.

But because we don't get one, food becomes the instant way to tune out of our crazy ass lives. So, it's not your perception so much of who you are and the way you're behaving that is getting you down. It's the fact that you think that you are unable to change it.

If I don't like who or what I think I am, that's one thing. But for me to then also simultaneously believe that there's nothing I can do about it, well, now I'm hopeless. Now, I might as well just eat until I die because what fking hope do I have? So, let's pivot that to understand and remember that when you start claiming responsibility for your previous choices, you now reclaim agency over your life.

We know that psychologists have talked for a long time about the concept of learned helplessness. And in case you're not familiar what that is, that is when people believe they have no control, they stop trying. And that is what happened to me.

I felt that I had no control over my choices. I craved sugar like a fking sugar rat. I don't know what that is.

I just made it up. I craved sugar like a crazy person. So, when you start taking responsibility for your choices and understanding that, okay, maybe I do have particular cravings right now, probably because something as simple as my gut bacteria is off balance.

But when you take responsibility for the previous choices you've been making, it interrupts that helplessness. And now that activates your brain's motivation centers. Listen, I will be the first to cheer you on from the sidelines and motivate you until the chocolate covered cows come home.

But honey, your prefrontal cortex, which I often talk about, there's the prefrontal cortex at the front of your brain, there's the subcortex or your habit brain way at the back, but your prefrontal cortex or your thinking brain, your human brain, this is some of the names they give it, this is where your decision-making and goal settings happen. Now, if we take that even further, that's when you get to realize that your identity is not fixed. It is built.

It has been built through your previous actions. Your brain is always changing. That's what they refer to as neuroplasticity.

And it means that every single choice you make literally rewires your neural pathways. So, when we sit in our little sorrowful states, we tell ourselves, I am just no good with this, or I'm bad with food, or I'm just not a morning person. Those are not things, they're bullshit stories that you're telling yourself.

They are reflections of your previous behaviors. But every single action that you take from here on in, is a tiny little wishlist vote for the person that you want to become. That's what brings us to the critical next step, which is looking more scientifically at your brain to realize that the consistency that you feel you're lacking right now is the gap between your identity and your behavior.

Okay, what do I mean? There's a theory called, which most of you I'm sure have heard of, called cognitive dissonance. It shows us that when your behavior or the way you're acting and your self-image or how you see yourself clash, as in you're doing the opposite to what you feel you want to do, your brain feels discomfort. Now, I mean, this goes right back to biblical days.

I can't remember which of the apostles that it was. I'm sure some of you know. Feel free to message me over on Insta.

Was it Paul? Was it Peter? I don't know. But one of the apostles said, I do the, well, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, I do the exact thing that I don't want to do. I mean, if a disciple of Jesus cannot control his decisions and they're not lining up with who he wants to be and how he wants to see himself, well, we're not hopeless.

But it does let us know that it's very human. At least we can rest in the fact that it's human. If you want to evolve, then changing your actions is going to be the fastest way to do it.

Trying to change the way you think or feel about something, good luck to you, honey. Good fking luck to you. Take a second and ask yourself today, are my actions so far today, have they been in harmony or have they been in alignment with the person that I want to be, the woman that I want to become? Because if they haven't, the next step for you to take is going to be a tiny micro choice.

(13:49 - 19:44)

I don't want you cleaning out the damn kitchen cupboards, throwing all the junk food into the bin. Listen, you can do it if you want. I've done it a thousand times in my life.

Never stopped me from going off to the shops. Never stopped me from stopping into the quickie mart or the servo and buying a fresh packet of chocolate. Your brain doesn't track isolated events, babe.

It tracks patterns. Every tiny small decision that you make sends another message to your brain. Yes, I am the type of woman who gives a shit about her health.

I am the type of woman who follows through. You are building a pattern just like a line of dominoes that when you set one off, it throws all the others into momentum as well. You can do that, but you've got to set up the isolated events first.

And if you really, really want to understand why this matters, then hold on tight to your little pantaloons because you've got to understand this next part. Those who do overcome emotional eating in life, those who do set that on the shelf and never have an issue with it again, or at least minimal fking interaction, the women who do lose weight have something called an internal locus control. They have internal locus control or an internal locus of control.

They believe that their actions shape their outcomes. It's not luck. It's not circumstances.

It's not wishing on a star. It's not other people. They own their results, the wins and I'm not going to say the losses or the mistakes.

I'm going to say the lessons. All of it puts you back in the driver's seat of your life. If, if you remember that ownership creates freedom.

If I look back at all the shitty, shitty things that have happened in my life, the fact that, yeah, I was binging and purging in my teens. I was molested by two brothers when I was very early in my teens. Then one of their mates raped me when I was in my later teens.

I mean, there was some really fked up shit that happened and that probably played a really big part in my food decisions from there on because I felt like if I can keep myself unattractive, then I can keep myself safe. So I have this really wild situation still where I have to work very hard on understanding that I'm safe. I am protected.

I am loved. It's a mantra I tell myself all day, every day. I just did some NSR exercises this morning using that exact same little mantra that I'm safe.

I'm protected and I am loved because I got some news that made me feel, I just had a wild nervous system reaction to it. Like my heart was racing. I felt massive anxiety.

It wasn't great news, but it wasn't the worst news in the world. My reaction was over the top. And I know that it's not because of the email that I got.

It's because of the previous events that have rolled out in my life. So the paradox of freedom is that when you start creating structure, you also create true freedom without any kind of personal responsibility of the things that have happened to you through your life. And like I say, when we're talking about really spooky things, like what I just mentioned, no, that was not my fault.

Oh God, I feel like I could cry. It wasn't my fault. None of that was my fault.

However, if I choose to stay stuck in a victim mentality, that's a choice. That could end up being a big fault for me. That would be my choice and my decision.

I just won't stay there. So if you really want to say goodbye to emotional eating because, oh yeah, I want to say goodbye to emotional eating, but I also want to get this fat off my ass, people, please. That is only going to happen when you take full accountability for your actions.

So, so often when I work with clients, they think, but I don't want to follow the eating codes. That's too much structure. And FYI, please, if you haven't got my free eating codes course yet, I laid them all out for you.

The five eating codes, the exact five steps that I followed to lose the 20 kilos, stop emotional eating and lose 20 kilos. You can get those over at kyliepax.com forward slash free course, or just hit the link in the show notes. But that is not boxing you in.

What it is, is giving you the structure that you need to be able to create the life that you want. Freedom is not the absence of commitments to yourself. It's your ability to choose what you want to commit to for yourself, which is so delicious.

I could just salivate. Just listen to that line. I love it.

So now you can really understand that as you start to take responsibility for all the choices that you've made in your life, not beat yourself up over them, just take ownership of them and say, yeah, it was my decision to overeat last night on the chisels and the dip and the whatever it is. Okay. When you start stepping into that woman's shoes, then your personal standards will naturally start to rise because you start expecting more from yourself.

You start surrounding yourself with people. And again, all up in my world, start listening to more episodes of the podcast. You start surrounding yourself with people who reflect the growth that you want to see in your life.

And the very best part, this is the part that makes you want to jump out into the street and yell at people. You will no longer tolerate any shit that does not align with the person you're becoming. Honey, we don't have time for me to keep going today, but a lot of you know, if you've listened to more episodes of this podcast, you know that I have had a female, which is so disappointing.

I had a female over the last two years, just abusing me, tormenting me, stalking me until it hit physical abuse. And now it's really very serious. So that's all I can really probably say about that right now.

(19:44 - 21:54)

But I set standards. So the more I set standards, which were initially verbal and then are now legal, but the more I set standards around myself to protect me from negativity in my life, people that don't represent who I want to be and don't encourage me on that path, the better I felt. Let's go back to my little mantra.

The better I felt, I felt safer. I felt more protected and I really felt more loved, most and more importantly, by me. So honey, I don't want you to think about responsibility as a burden.

I want you to think about it as your fking superpower. Your future self is being built every single day by the choices that you're making. And the best part, you have the pen in your hand right now.

So I want you to think today, as we wrap this up, I want you to leave with this question. If your future self could thank you today, if she could thank you for one choice that you were going to make today, what would that choice be? If there's a... Listen, it's not if. There is a version of you and she's going to wake up tomorrow and she's either going to feel so proud that you did X today, or she's going to be like, for fk's sake, I can't believe I did X again.

Okay. I want you to fill in the X and I want you to make a choice that's going to leave you feeling deliciously proud of yourself. As always, if you want more of this in your life, then you know where to be.

You've got to head on over to KyliePax.com forward slash blueprint, where you will find the bombshell blueprint, or just hit the link in the show notes. That is where you get the videos, the entire blueprint, plus the recipes and the manifestation scripts to help bring all of this into your life. As always, I'm sending you tremendous amounts of love.

I cannot wait to see you again next week. Until then, gorgeous ones, bye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the bombshell blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your way now. You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your weight without losing your sanity. I will see you next week.