Ep #494: Overdesire. Overhunger. Overtrying.

You are listening to The Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo episode 494.

Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach instructor, Brooke Castillo.

What’s up, beautiful friends? I’m having the most ridiculous day. I am sitting in a gorgeous hotel room in Monaco looking at the sea and dozens of yachts that are on the ocean. We’re about to go to a yacht show today, which sounds so crazy and exciting and fun.

We have been traveling all over Europe, working and traveling, and it’s been amazing. The weather is gorgeous, the people are awesome. It was very cool when I checked into my hotel here today, the guy checking us in was a podcast fan. It was so great. It was so exciting.

And I forget how many of you all are all over the world listening to this podcast and to run into one of you all in the wild was really, really awesome. It was really touching.

So today we’re going to talk about overhunger, overdesire, and overtrying. One of the reasons I wanted to create this podcast is I’m going to be doing a weight loss coaching class and I want to invite you all to come. You can go to TheLifeCoachSchool.com/WeightLoss.

It’s going to be much more than just weight loss but that will be the main focus and the coaching will be on people who are trying to manage their relationship with food, trying not to eat against their own will, and trying to control their overdesire and overhunger, and this new concept, overtrying.

So as I was preparing for this class, I have been doing a lot of coaching recently inside of Get Coached on weight loss and people that want to lose weight and what they’re struggling with. And one of the things that I noticed is this thing I’m calling overtrying.

And overtrying comes from overdesire. So I want to do a quick review on overdesire and overhunger to make sure you understand those concepts. Now, if you’re not using this to lose weight, you can apply it to anything in your life.

We can have overdesire and overhunger for money, we can have overdesire and overhunger for social media, for anything that we’re buffering with, for any goal that we want.

So the idea of overdesire came to me when I was studying the neurotransmitters in the brain and dopamine. And there’s still so much to study in this field and it’s very - I mean, obviously studying the brain is very complex and very intricate.

Many of the teachers that I’ve studied from have made it very simple for me to understand in a way that has changed my life. And so that’s the way that I’m going to try and convey it here. I’m not trying to give you all the science. I’m not trying to be a neuroscientist here at all. But I want to explain it to you in the way that I learned it so you can kind of have a simple sense of what’s going on in our brain.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter of desire and motivation. And when we over-activate it artificially, we create a lot of trouble for ourselves. We create an overt desire for, in the case of weight loss, for food, especially for sugar and flour when we are eating a lot of very concentrated foods that make our neurotransmitters go haywire.

But the way that I want to talk about it today is also in terms of the overdesire that we can have to achieve a goal. And I have never really talked to you about it in this way. And a lot of times, because I teach the concept that you must really believe in your goal, that you must really see yourself having achieved it, you must identify yourself as someone who’s accomplished it, some people misinterpret that to mean that you don’t want it bad enough.

And that is not what I mean. I think sometimes we can want it too much. We can want our goal too much and not believe in it enough, and that’s what creates this overdesire and overtrying.

This is something that I talk a lot to my son Christian about in golf. He really wants to win at golf. We all have our thing that we want to win at. And sometimes when we want it too bad - think about that. When we have an overdesire for it, we burn ourselves out on it and we try too hard and we get too tense and we get too anxious and we get too wrapped up in it.

And I see this happening a lot with people that are struggling with weight loss. An overdesire, I believe, in this context, comes from believing that once we lose weight, life will be so much better. And if we could just control that circumstance, if we could just be thinner, everything would be better. And we reject who we are in this moment, we reject the life that we have, we reject our body in this moment for some future moment when everything will be amazing, especially our feelings.

And we attribute the feeling that we’re going to have to the body that we’re going to have, to the weight loss that we’re going to have. Instead of understanding that the feelings are what drive the result, we start imagining that the result will drive the feelings.

And when we get this overdesire, we start to believe that we have to get this result as fast as possible. So when we have an overdesire for weight loss, we want to weigh a certain amount, we need to try and get to that weight immediately so we can have those feelings immediately.

This is why we are so tempted by fast results and quick weight-loss schemes and quick weight-loss drugs and things that give us the fastest possible weight loss. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with fast weight loss.

It’s the reason why we want it to be fast that can cause us a problem. And when we have that overdesire, we will know because we will be in a hurry to get out of this life and into the new skinny life, into the other life that we’re going to then inhabit, the other identity, the other persona, the other body that we get to be a part.

And when we have that overdesire, we do what I’ve been calling overtrying. And what overtrying looks like is it’s a huge attempt to get a quick result that rarely works long term. I think about this in terms of get-rich-quick schemes. I think about this in terms of get-thin-quick schemes.

They’re sold to us in ways like, “Hey, you can have this result now and won’t it be great when you have this result because you won’t have to be you anymore. You won’t have to be in that terrible body or in that terrible financial situation and we can get you out of where you are right now quickly.”

So we build up all this overdesire, this increase for I must have this, I must get it, I got to get it quickly, I’m going to put all my time and all my energy into getting this right this second, and we burn ourselves out. So we go on crazy crash diets, we start working out three times a day, we start being way too extreme, we start with our jobs, with our work, we start overworking or working at night, we’re doing all sorts of craziness because we need that result, we need that money, we need that thinness right now so we can stop being in pain with where we’re at.

And if you don’t get a hold of that, if you don’t manage the overdesire and the overtrying, you will eventually just give up completely. And that’s when I get a lot of my clients. They’ve been overtrying to lose weight for so long and they’ve had overdesire to lose weight for so long that they’ve literally given up.

And even though the desire is there, the effort, there’s just no effort. And if there is, they want to go right back to overdesire and overtrying. There is no middle ground for them, and I can relate to this immensely. And I’ve had many conversations with many of my students about what creates this overdesire, and I think it’s important to understand.

There’s tremendous socialization, tremendous media exposure and entertainment exposure that basically teaches us that being thinner, being at our ideal weight will make us so much happier. And if we can just get there, if we just do what we’re told, if we just follow the rules of the diet or whatever and get there, we will be happier.

So it’s not like it’s our fault that we have this overdesire. But when you combine this with also the types of food that create dopamine, that make us feel good, that taste good, that bring us pleasure, and so we have an overdesire for those foods and we have an overdesire to be at our ideal weight, the overtrying is intensified.

And the pain associated with it is tremendous and it just keeps beating us down into the same place where we feel like we have to just give up completely. No more attempts to lose weight, no more being socialized with overdesire, now I’m just going to accept everything the way it is and maybe be a little bit miserable about it, or try and be happy about it.

And I want to say I agree that this is a better option than perpetuating overdesire and overhunger and overdesire with food, I think that is just tyranny. I don’t think that will ever lead to anywhere good. But I also don’t agree that we have to completely give up trying just because we want to give up overtrying.

So basically, my prescription, my philosophy, the way that I have chosen to approach dealing with overdesire and overhunger and overtrying in my own life is to understand what creates it.

Understand the neurotransmitters in my brain and how they’re affected by the food I eat, to understand the hormones in my body and how they’re affected by the food that I eat, and how they create overhunger by sending my insulin into places that it’s not meant to go, and by managing insulin with the food that I eat, being able to reduce overhunger and reduce the overdesire for foods that create that need to over-try to lose weight.

And then to also approach change in my lifestyle and in my body in a way that accepts and loves who I am in this moment, and also pursues gentle, if not slow success. Slow success and success that we build on and success that we do gently with ourselves and the actions that we take from that place are sustainable.

And when we do sustainable actions that we can literally do for the rest of our lives, we can maintain results for the rest of our lives. It seems so logical when I say it that way. If you want permanent results, you have to take permanent action. You can’t take temporary action and get permanent results. It just doesn’t work that way.

So what is our resistance to losing weight slowly? When I say to someone, “Hey, are you willing to lose this weight over three years? Are you willing to lose this weight over five years?” And ironically, some of my students will say to me, “No, I’d rather just not lose it if it’s going to take that long. Forget it.”

That’s overdesire. When you tell someone it’s going to take two years or three years to lose weight if they’re 100 pounds overweight or 50 pounds overweight, are you willing to take that much time and they say no, it’s because overdesire is at play.

Not just overdesire for food but also overdesire for results, overdesire for thinness because there’s the belief that somehow it will be the magic pill that will save us from ourselves.

And the truth is that there are a lot of reasons why we overeat. There’s a lot of reasons why we don’t accept our bodies the way that they are. And those reasons really come - they’re very personal and they really come from our own self-awareness and our own self-compassion. And they’re solved in a way that is supportive, is caring, is forgiving, is the truth.

There’s a big difference between having your own back and taking care of yourself and understanding why you’re eating food when you’re not hungry, and giving up. There is a momentum that can happen. There is success that can happen at a slower rate for many of us because we need to take the time to create the self-awareness.

And we need to not be all-in or all-out. We need to be with ourselves. And we need to find answers that work within our lifestyle, within our choices, and within what we actually want for our lives. Because people will say to me all the time, “I want to weigh 110 pounds and I want to eat three large meals a day and eat whatever I want.”

What do you truly want? What is that balance between those two things? Do you have to have the perfect body and the perfect diet? Or do you want to have a life that is supportive of what you want to do with your life and the body that you want to live in?

As we kind of move towards understanding our overdesire for food, our overdesire for thinness, the overhunger that’s happening in our body because of the food that we’re buffering on and the food that we’re eating and we forgive ourselves for the overtrying that we’ve done over and over and over and over again, we can find this amazing place where we have the right amount of desire for success in our lives.

For being in a healthy body that we feel comfortable in that is the size that we want to be, and also honoring the desires we have for eating food that we want to have exceptions, to have a protocol that serves the lifestyle and the energy needs that we have, and the desire for pleasure that we have.

And have nothing be completely out of control where one week we’re not eating anything and the next week we’re eating everything and making ourselves sick. But finding the protocol that works for us with no one else’s permission, with the decision that has worked in our lives.

It’s very interesting to me to look back over my life and look at the decisions I made and the desire I had for certain body types based on how I was socialized and based on who I was dating and based on the friends I was hanging out with, and how elastic that can be and how I used to want to be as thin as possible and be in the smallest size possible, and believing that that would be what would make me the most happy.

And then getting there and realizing that it had no effect on my happiness. The only thing that affected my happiness, that has ever affected my happiness, was the way that I think and the way that I choose to think in a conscious way.

I was coaching a woman the other day and she was talking about how the overeating workshop that I have completely changed her weight and changed her life in terms of her protocol and what she eats. But she also took everything that she’d learned in that class and has applied it to making money, has applied it to work.

And she was telling me that there are times where she feels just so in control of her life and so disciplined and so connected to herself and so compassionate and she’s able to eat exactly what she’s decided ahead of time to eat, which is something that’s really important that I teach in all my weight loss is that we should be deciding what we’re eating with our prefrontal cortex ahead of time.

We should not be deciding what we’re eating when our hormones and neurotransmitters are out of control in the moment. We should be planning and balancing those things out so we can be on a more steady decision-making plane when we’re deciding what to eat.

When we’re deciding in the moment, when we’ve gotten too hungry, or we’ve eaten a bunch of sugar or flour and our hormones and neurotransmitters are out of control, we can’t make logical decisions. We make decisions from a toddler brain.

And she was saying that sometimes she just really struggles with it, especially when she’s with her young toddler and she’s with her young child.

And I told her, I said, “Listen, I don’t want you to think that you’re having trouble in those situations because those situations are difficult. You have an overeating problem because you have an under-feeling problem. And when you have a bunch of overdesire and overhunger and overtrying going on in your life, it is very difficult to stay present and allow yourself to feel emotion instead of eating. Allow yourself to feel what’s going on for you and to process that emotion and utilize that information to think at a higher level.

When you tap into your emotional intelligence, you can build emotional strength. And when you build emotional strength, you have the time to control your mind cognitively and to decide more consciously what you want to think and what you want your life to look like.”

I believe that weight loss is one of the best avenues that I have working with, especially women, on understanding how we give up our own control to external forces and we don’t maintain our own agency and make our own decisions about what we want to look like, how we want to feel physically, what we want to eat and drink, regardless of what anyone else is eating or drinking or telling us we should eat or drink, and being someone who has regulated desire, regulated hunger, and regulated effort being put into their life.

The last thing I want to do is watch intelligent, amazing, capable women spin their energy away on their body and food instead of creating their contribution that they have for this world. So if you’re interested in being part of this class that I’m teaching this month, it’s a coaching class where I’m going to be talking about overdesire, overhunger, and overtrying, but I’m also going to be coaching clients.

As part of this class, you will also get full access to my Stop Overeating workshop. And in that workshop, I talk about all of these concepts in their basic form. I’ve further developed them, which I will talk about in the class some more. It’s kind of like the next layer and the next version that I’ve given you today, and I want to coach you on some of those topics.

Because I do think the more we can simplify this problem for ourselves, the easier it will be to simplify the solution for ourselves. Everyone has their own specific solution for this problem. But we need to make sure we’re defining it in a way that understands that the reason we might be unhappy, the reason we might be struggling, the reason we might be anxious is not because of our weight but because of our hormones, our neurotransmitters, and the way we’re thinking.

So I want to do my part to help you change whatever is going on in your brain and in your body so you can get the results you want, not because your life will be better when you arrive there but so your life can be better now.

Have a beautiful week everyone. I hope to see you in class. Just go to TheLifeCoachSchool.com/WeightLoss and I’ll see you in class. Take care.

Hey, if you enjoy listening to this podcast, you have to come check out Self-Coaching Scholars. It's my monthly coaching program where we take all this material and we apply it. We take it to the next level and we study it. Join me over at the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. Make sure you type in the TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. I'd love to have you join me in Self-Coaching Scholars. See you there.