Why You Beat Yourself Up After Overeating During Vacation, and 4 Steps to Get Back on Track
My client, Michelle, returned from her week long vacation at the beach, and she opened up her session stating, “I have betrayed myself. I can’t even look at my thoughtfully filled-out vacation food plan full of notes to myself about how ‘this time will be different.’ It makes me feel such distrust in myself.”
Michelle was swimming in the emotion shame, what Brené Brown calls, “The swampland of the soul.” This is a very common feeling I help my weight maintenance clients recognize and process, not only after vacation, but after holidays and special occasions as well.
Our brain’s desire to return to what’s familiar and easy produces a lot of discomfort that challenges our weight management commitment to ourselves.
We find out quickly when we’re in familiar circumstances, like a beach vacation, where the “old you” used to overindulge in food and alcohol, whether our commitment to ourselves to maintain our weight no matter what, is stronger than instant gratification.
In this post, I’ll explain why this happens, share exactly what shame is, why we’re prone to it, and why it never serves us, and provide a 4 step solution to end the shame cycle.
As I mentioned in my previous article, “Prevent Overeating on Vacation: 3 Simple Steps to Keep You on Track,” our brain is a genius at creating excuses and coming up with thoughts that create urges and desire for foods and behaviors we used to give into.
Our brain loves to use circumstances, like vacation, as an excuse, and it loves us to not be aware of the unconscious thoughts it creates so it can, “have its way.”
Example thoughts that challenge our commitment to ourselves include:
“You look great—it’s just one week.”
“How much damage can you do in a week?”
“It’s just a small bite.”
“It’s one week to just relax.”
“Funnel cake I can only get once a year at the beach boardwalk.”
“I’m on vacation, and things are not routine.”
“You won’t gain that much weight, so a little flour and sugar while on vacation won’t hurt.”
“You can get back on track.”
“You better get all of your bread and ice cream in today because tomorrow, when vacation ends, you’ll be back on your food protocol.”
Sound familiar?
Yes, me too.
It’s these seemingly innocent sounding thoughts that challenge our commitment to our vacation food plan, our new thin identity, and ultimately our goal to maintain our weight loss.
Sometimes we give in, like Michelle…we have all done this at some point in our lives.
The worst part of all of this, as my client Michelle experienced, is after giving into the instant gratification, the dopamine ‘pleasure fog’ clears, and a mountain of shame is revealed behind it.
We are in that moment faced with the decision we made to give into the urge, and confronted with our choice to disregard our commitment to ourselves.
Your brain thinks this is a reason to beat yourself up.
And many believe that beating themselves up will motivate them to not give into future urges.
We use our humanness against ourselves.
Clients say shameful things to themselves like:
“If this weren’t such a pattern for me, I could be more sympathetic to myself.”
“It is hard to be kind to myself after failing myself.”
“I am weak.”
“I am a failure.”
“What is wrong with me?”
“I’ve never been good at doing what it takes to keep my weight off.”
Shaming yourself and beating yourself up NEVER motivate you to stick to your commitment to yourself.
Instead, it creates the opposite effect.
It makes you want to comfort yourself to seek relief from the negative emotion.
Relief is often found in eating unplanned food for the dopamine hit to temporarily numb the negative emotion, but overeating does not serve your weight maintenance goals.
This creates a shame cycle loop so many of my clients fall into that looks like:
Eat off of their vacation food plan → Have a shameful thought → Feel shame → Seek comfort in food to dull the negative emotion → Client’s result of eating unplanned food is self-judgement (usually as some flavor of weak and unworthy), self-loathing, self-bullying, weight gain → Loop repeats.
What is shame and why are we so prone to it?
Shame, fundamentally, is a problem of self-worth and self-acceptance.
From an evolutionary standpoint, “fitting in” with the group was crucial to survival; humans needed to band together to effectively operate as a group to better deal with the terrifying forces of nature.
Shame is a status-based emotion—in Paleolithic times, it was a way to establish a group’s pecking order to create the best way of cooperation for survival.
It is caused by your predictions about the judgments of others that you are not meeting the social norms.
These predicted judgments are really beliefs you have about yourself and your unworthiness—they’re projections.
Shame alerts us to what we value most, and it signals us to recommit to the higher standard we’ve set for ourselves.
In my client Michelle’s case, she felt tremendous shame for disregarding her desire to take care of herself through healthy eating, and as a result, not living in alignment with her value to take care of her health.
When we can understand humans aren’t perfect, they make mistakes, and sometimes they don’t show up the way they want to, we can open ourselves up to compassion and acceptance.
Shame isn’t a problem if we learn from the message it’s teaching us.
Shame teaches us about the person we want to be and what we value most.
It’s a gift guiding you to change your path to become the person you’re destined to be.
So how do we break this shame cycle?
I have a four step solution:
1. Acknowledgement
With kindness, acknowledge you didn’t uphold your commitment to yourself.
Self-compassion is a must here--you are a human with a human brain.
Nothing is wrong with you, and nothing went wrong.
Compassion isn’t something we naturally possess--we have to choose to practice it.
Brené Brown explains, “…compassion is possible for anyone who can accept the struggles that make us human—our fears, imperfections, losses and shame.”
From a self-compassionate place, we can have empathy, and empathy allows us to really open up to ourselves so we may hear ourselves and understand where we are vulnerable to shame.
2. Recognize and Record Thoughts
From this self-compassionate space, note the thoughts that drove you to take the action to eat the unplanned food.
I highly recommend you check out my previous blog post, “1 Step to Stop Overeating While Homebound During the Covid-19 Pandemic” where I share in detail how to recognize an urge, and how to allow it instead of giving into it.
As I noted earlier in this article, these thoughts often look like:
“You look great—it’s just one week.”
“How much damage can you do in a week?”
“It’s just a small bite.”
“It’s one week to just relax.”
“Funnel cake I can only get once a year at the beach boardwalk.”
“I’m on vacation, and things are not routine.”
“You won’t gain that much weight, so a little flour and sugar while on vacation won’t hurt.”
“You can get back on track.”
3. Decide
Decide deliberately what you’re going to make this mean.
Yes, that’s right, you get to make this mean whatever you want.
You can make it mean you’re a horrible failure who betrayed herself and was never meant to be thin, or you can make it mean something totally empowering.
It is equally true to decide the experience taught you more about yourself on vacation.
Being on vacation placed you face-to-face with your brain’s desire to return to what is familiar and easy.
Shame’s message to you was to remind you of the importance for how much you value your health.
This moment may be what changes your path forever towards the person you are destined to be.
4. Move Forward (Focus Forward)
In the moments where we give into the urge to overeat on vacation or consume food we did not plan to eat, we need to have empathy for ourselves.
You ate some food you didn’t plan to eat, and now it’s time to move on.
From this place of empathy, decide you are going to change in this moment.
Bring yourself back to where your power resides—in the present and future, and the decisions you can make now.
Your potential is right where you left it.
You are the source of your change.
Believe in your power to pick right back up, and keep moving forward.
The past is over and done, and no amount of shaming yourself will change it.
Give yourself the gift of self-compassion, self-acceptance, and self-love.
To quote Roy Bennett, “Embrace being perfectly imperfect.”
Click here to schedule a free 30 minute session with me; I can help you see how overeating on vacation is no big deal, and it’s actually a gift for the future. Also, we will explore how my 12 week weight management program can be the last program you ever have to sign up for to keep the weight off for good. With your drive and dedication to yourself, my life and weight coaching tips and tools will be all you need to maintain your weight for a lifetime. I look forward to hearing from you!