300: Start Before You Feel Ready

Chris Sandel: Hey. If you want access to the transcripts, the show notes, and the links talked about as part of this episode, you can head to www.seven-health.com/300.

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Real Health Radio. I’m your host, Chris Sandel. I’m a nutritionist and a coach and an eating disorder expert, and I help people to fully recover.

We are at show 300. I can’t believe that it’s 300 and that I’ve been doing this since – I think it was August 2015, so coming up to 9 years. I know there was a stage where I was very religiously doing this every single week, and then since having a child almost 7 years ago, that has got in the way, so sometimes I’m more regular with it every week and other times there’s more rebroadcast episodes going out.

But yeah, there’s been 300 episodes gone out over the last 9 years, and it’s kind of a big deal. I’m not going to make a big deal about it today, because this is just a regular episode. I did have some grand plan of doing something celebratory for this episode, and then life got lifey, and I had some friends come up and stay with me for the last 5 days. That was wonderful; we had a really great time. But it’s meant that I haven’t done any big celebration for this episode. It’s just a regular, run-of-the-mill episode – which I hope is still enjoyable and valuable, and I know it will be.

At some point I need to do a life update. I know it’s been over a year, I think, since I’ve done of those, and I had actually planned to do that as part of this episode, but I need some time to sit down and reflect on what I want to cover over that episode, because it’s been such a long amount of time. But yeah, it’s pretty nice to think that we’re 300 episodes into this thing.

There are a couple things I want to mention before we get started with this.

The first is that I’m currently taking on new clients, and I fully believe that you can change and that you can reach a place of full recovery, even if you don’t or even if the eating disorder brings up thoughts that disagree with this as an idea. When I think about the work that I do, I’m really focusing on three main areas with people. One is looking at how to physically repair the body. The body has such an impact on the kinds of thoughts and feelings and sensations that arise, so recovery is very much about the physical repair and recovery that needs to take place.

We look at developing resilience and having the capacity and the tools and the different ways of being able to deal with the challenges of life – so being able to deal with the ups and downs or the struggles without having to rely on the eating disorder.

Then the third is having a joy-filled or exciting life. This isn’t going to be what it feels like every single day, but so much of the eating disorder just takes away the life, so that you’re having this half-life, in a sense. You’re kind of marking time. So what we’re focusing on is those three areas and how to have a more enjoyable, spontaneous, authentic, connected life, and being able to have the energy to be able to do that, being able to have the ability to live life in alignment with your values.

If this is what you’re after and you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired and living with an eating disorder, then I would love to help. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com. If you just include the word ‘coaching’ in the subject line, then I can send over the details for how you can apply for a recovery strategy call, where we can have a chat about what’s going on and look at how to make a difference and to have you have a different life ahead of you and reach that place of full recovery. So if this is of interest to you, you can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and as I said, with the subject line of ‘coaching’.

00:04:18

The podcasts now have videos

The next thing that I just want to mention is that there are now videos as part of this podcast. If you’re already watching this on YouTube or on Spotify, then it’s going to be blatantly obvious that there is videos attached to this, but if you’re just listening to this and you use some other way of listening to podcasts, then I want to just make you aware that there is now video connected to this. I did this last time; the last solo episode was the first episode that I did that with, and this is how I’m going to be doing them going forward.

There are a number of guest episodes that are already in the can, so those aren’t going to be having video connected to it, but going forward I’m going to be doing the guest interviews with video as well because I just think it’s much more engaging. People are consuming video in a way that they didn’t before.

So the way that we’re doing this at the moment is we’re putting the videos up on YouTube and we’re putting the videos up on Spotify because the functionality is there to do that very easily. I need to look into all of the other podcasting platforms and see if they’re now accepting video, but I know for sure that Spotify is. So if you want to be able to see me while listening to this thing, then head over to one of those places. And that will be in the show notes, where you can go and find that stuff.

00:05:41

Start before you feel ready

On with today’s show. What I want to cover as part of today – it’s a solo episode, and it’s just me chatting – it’s the idea of starting before you feel ready. This is something that comes up a lot with the clients that I work with, or even the people who are getting in contact to say that they’re thinking about wanting to do this work.

Often what it feels like is people are waiting for this ‘aha’ moment, where “I’m going to wake up and I’m going to have this feeling of total motivation, where, you know what, I’ve been thinking about recovery for a really long time, and now I’m just really ready and raring to go with it, and after that it’s going to feel so much easier because I’ve made this decision, and it’s going to be onwards with recovery.”

Unfortunately, that’s just not how recovery works. There isn’t this instant feeling of motivation and excitement for doing recovery. There isn’t actually a feeling of complete readiness before you get started with this.

00:06:44

Why waiting for rock bottom doesn’t work

The other piece that people will often hope for is that “Things are going to get so bad that I will hit this rock bottom point where now I realise I need to do recovery. It’s going to be so obvious to me that things have gotten so bad that I’m going to now just be like, ‘Right, this is it, it’s time to rip the band-aid off; I’m going to do it’.” Again, it’s not that this hasn’t happened, but I would say that this is a very rare occurrence.

The thing that makes it a rare occurrence is that, one, when you’re getting into a worse and worse place with an eating disorder, the eating disorder thoughts get louder and louder. There’s just more noise that is there constantly, giving you all of these reasons and logic and explanations about why you shouldn’t do this and why you should keep doing what you’re doing and why you should even increase the exercise even more or decrease the eating even more or whatever the eating disorder thoughts are suggesting for you to do.

When you’re in a worse physical state, you’re typically further down the polyvagal ladder. I’m not going to talk a huge amount about polyvagal theory as part of this podcast, but within our nervous system there are different places we can be, and one of the analogies within polyvagal parlance is that it’s like being on a ladder. When you’re at the top of the ladder, you’re in safe & social and things are much better, and when you’re down the bottom of the ladder, you can be in either fight or flight or you can be in shutdown.

When you’re in these different places along the autonomic nervous system in the polyvagal states, within each state there are certain thoughts and feelings and sensations that naturally arise in your mind. You aren’t thinking your thoughts; your thoughts appear in your consciousness and you become aware of those thoughts. And depending on which state you’re in will depend on what are the quality of thoughts that naturally arise. It will have an impact on your perspective about things, about your thoughts about who you are, and your ability to do different hard things, or your self-worth – all of these things that are impacted upon by the state that you’re in.

And as your eating disorder gets worse and worse, then you are lower down the ladder, and the kind of thoughts and feelings and sensations that naturally arise are going to be of a worse quality in terms of helping you to make changes.

Also, the more you’re heading towards rock bottom, the more that life has fallen away. There are less things that you are doing or participating in or enjoying. Counterintuitively, rather than making you feel like “Wow, I’m missing out on so many of these things”, because these things have now gone missing, you become more accustomed to this. Life just feels a lot less enjoyable, a lot more meaningless, a lot more just day after day.

When this occurs, the thing that happens is it feels more imperative to hold on to the eating disorder, or it feels more important to hold on to the thinness or whatever it may be that the eating disorder is convincing you it is delivering on. So it becomes more difficult.

So this idea of “I’m going to hit rock bottom and that’s going to change things for me” – the amount of conversations I’ve had with people where I’m like, “This must’ve been your bottom”, and it just hasn’t touched the sides. It hasn’t been the thing that has allowed them to have this moment of clarity. If anything, more and more awareness starts to disappear about how bad things really are and how much this is really affecting them.

So what I would say is don’t wait for things to supposedly get so bad that then you’re going to have this moment of insight, because I don’t think that that is ever really going to occur, and you just don’t want to be depending on that thing.

Also, you’re going to have to go past the point that you’re at now as part of your recovery. If I’m using an analogy, if you’re currently at a 3 out of 10 and you’re waiting for things to get to a 1 out of 10 before you make a change, if you do make that change at 1 out of 10, you’re still going to have to come back past the 3 out of 10 to get to having your 10 out of 10 life – just to use simple numbers as an example. So why wait for things getting worse to then say, “Okay, now I’m going to make a change”?

All that’s going to have to happen is you’re going to have to do more repair than you were going to do before. It’s had more time for avoidance to build up, and “It’s been even longer now since I’ve had breakfast” or “It’s been even longer now since I’ve taken a day off exercise” or “It’s been even longer since (fill in the blank).” The longer something has gone on, the more challenging it becomes. So let’s not make it any longer than it needs to be.

00:11:44

Start with big changes, not small ones

I think this feeling of “I’m going to start when I feel ready” can also apply when someone does start to make changes. There can often be this feeling of “Let me start with some really tiny little changes. I’ll start with some changes that are really small, and then I’m going to build up and then I’ll do a slightly bigger one and then I’ll do a slightly bigger one and go in this fashion.” I understand the logic of that, and especially if you’re having lots of unhelpful eating disorder thoughts telling you about what your capacity to do anything is or what your ability to change is, that that can get in the way of you realising and recognising how big a change you can actually make.

But what will invariably happen if you’re making these very small changes is that you don’t get very much upside for them. If you’re investing a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of money, the ability to then reap a huge investment return on that is pretty small.

What I think is more likely to happen – and this has been based on two consults I’ve had this week where I’ve been talking to people, and what they’ve realised and recognised within themselves and within the changes they made is that the smaller the change is, the more that they’re then impacted when there is any kind of physical change within the body.

So if I make a small change and then there’s a change in my weight, that is disproportionately blown out of proportion. There is almost this resentment that then gets built up if there is any kind of change. There’s a lot more hoping that “I’m going to make this small change and there’s going to be no actual downside” – from the way that the eating disorder categorises a downside – “but I’m going to make this change and my weight’s not going to change at all. All that’s going to happen is I make a change and there’s this positive upside.”

That’s just not how recovery works, but when you’re making those small changes, that’s often what happens, and there’s a lot more resentment that gets built up. There’s a lot more overanalysing of everything, versus if I’m making something that is more significant, you go in with the expectation of “Wow, this is going to be difficult” or you go in with the expectation of “This change is going to lead to a shift in my weight.” It allows you to go in with the right expectation as opposed to if I go in with something small, I’m hoping that it’s not going to lead to anywhere that my eating disorder doesn’t like it to. And then when that does happen, it gets all blown out of proportion.

00:14:21

Consistently make changes before you feel ready

The other one connected with this is “I make a small change and then I’m going to wait until it feels really, really, really normal, and then I’m going to make the next change. I make a small change; I’m then going to wait – I don’t know how long I’m going to wait, but I’m going to wait until I now feel ready to make the next change.”

What unfortunately happens with this is when you’re not consistently making changes within recovery, it’s allowing more and more time for the eating disorder thoughts to arise and for all of the unhelpful thoughts to get in the way, and for the eating disorder in a sense to mount a very strong argument. The best way to deal with an argument from the eating disorder isn’t to mount a better counterargument in terms of being able to verbalise something better or look at the reasons why the eating disorder is wrong; it’s to actually take action.

So the best way to mount an argument is to actually take action against the eating disorder. If what you’re doing instead of taking action is “I’m waiting and I’m waiting and I’m waiting to feel ready”, it then means that it’s more likely that the thought that comes to mind and really takes hold is like “Well, this is as far as I can go. I can’t make any further changes. This is as much as we can do right now” and just getting stuck.

So rather than waiting until I feel ready, it’s like “I made a change, and it’s now been a week so I’m making another change, and it’s now been a week so I’m making another change” and really having that consistency in change.

Because really, when I think about recovery, you’re never really standing still. Recovery, you are always spiralling up or spiralling down. The reason why I think in this manner is because when I think about eating disorders, I think of them as anxiety disorders. The thing with all anxiety disorders is that anxiety disorders are about avoidance, and they’re about avoiding certain feelings or sensations or thoughts or events. For example, if I have this particular thought that comes up, I need to now do something to be able to deal with it – to either take that thought away or to distract myself or whatever it may be.

So often with the eating disorder, it’s then doing things that are not pro recovery. So “I was thinking about having some breakfast, but then these eating disorder thoughts became really loud and there was all this guilt and shame and this anticipation anxiety about it, and then the way I dealt with that uncomfortable and unhelpful thought is I just didn’t have the breakfast.”

What happens is that the more you’re having that avoidance, the more that avoidance builds up. If you’re making a change and then waiting a really long time, it’s now been a really long time since you’ve made a change, and whatever change you’re going to then make, it’s been a really long time since you’ve last done that. So I do really believe in having this momentum, where you’re spiralling up because you’re regularly making changes. You’re regularly making changes that actually provide you with an upside.

00:17:32

You can never appease the eating disorder

The thing that I also want people to understand is the eating disorder and the thoughts are never going to approve of what you’re doing. There’s often this thought of “If I make the goal or I make the change a little smaller, then the eating disorder is going to pat me on the back and say, ‘Yeah, this is fine. You go for it.’” With every iteration of the goal where you reduce a little more, reduce a little more, reduce a little more, that never happens. At every point, you’re getting told, “This is the wrong thing to do.”

This can be the case even if you completely follow through with everything that the eating disorder asks of you. If you say, “Cool, today I’m going to do everything the eating disorder asks of me”, at the end of that day, what will have happened is typically two things. One, your eating disorder will still mock you for the fact that you didn’t do recovery, so you suffer in that way; and two, you’re then told, “Well, you maybe didn’t even need that snack, or you maybe should’ve gone out for more walking.” Whichever way you cut it, it’s never enough.

So by getting hooked on these thoughts and thinking, “How can I make these changes and do it in a way that appeases the eating disorder?”, you never appease it. You’ll always still end up with these unhelpful thoughts. So the way to be dealing with this, as I said, is to really be starting before you’re ready. That can be making bigger changes than you think you can handle, or it means making another change quicker than you think you are ready for, but just consistently having those changes occurring.

One of the things that I will regularly say to clients is that you don’t think your way into acting differently; you act your way into thinking differently. It really is through the action-taking that you start to see things differently, and you start to experience things differently, and your perception starts to shift. But it’s so often that the idea is like, “Hey, I want all of these things to happen in advance”, and it’s just not the case.

So I’m a big one for managing expectations. If I’m working with someone, I’m saying, hey, I want you to expect this to feel uncomfortable, and for you to do it anyway. And if you’re going to experience something that’s uncomfortable, why not actually genuinely benefit from it because you’re making a change that has an upside – and to really expect the confidence to show up after the fact.

The confidence isn’t going to show up before the fact. You’re not going to enter into this new meal that you’re having for the first time in a really long time and feel 100% confident and ready and great beforehand. There is going to be anticipation anxiety. There is going to be this uncomfortableness there. There can be even after having that thing. But if you go into it expecting those things to be there, when they show up, it’s like, “Okay, this makes sense” versus if you’re trying to figure out a way of how to have this change occur without experiencing any of those things. That’s just not likely to happen. I would say it’s really never going to happen.

00:20:46

I’ve never felt 100% ready for meaningful changes

If I reflect on myself, I can’t think of anything that I value in my life that I felt 100% ready to do before starting it. If I think about getting into the relationship that I’m in – yes, from the moment I met Ali, I was like, “I want to be in a relationship with this person”, but there’s still some unsureness there.

Becoming a dad. I love being a dad. It has its challenges, for sure, but I really love doing that. I love Ramsay. I love spending time with him. And I was not 100% sure that I was ready for that before we got started. I remember hearing a quote of someone saying, “The difference between thinking about being a parent and actually being a parent is the equivalent of seeing a tornado on TV versus being in a tornado” – which I think is probably quite an accurate description.

If I think about starting the business that I now run, there was huge amounts of unsureness connected to it. Seeing clients. My God, seeing clients for the first time, even for the first few years, it’s a really scary thing too. I’m learning how to do these things.

So yeah, there are just so many aspects of my life that, if I reflect on them, it wasn’t that I felt 100% sure and ready and everything before I got started. I mean, I moved from Sydney when I was 21 to the other side of the world, to move over to London. And yes, I was excited about that, but I had no idea how that was going to turn out. After living in London for a decade, I moved out into the countryside. I had no idea how that was going to turn out. 15-16 months ago, I moved from England up to living in Scotland. Again, no idea how that was going to turn out.

I just really want to say that for most of the things in life that you will truly enjoy and value and will feel like a good decision in the end, there is going to be some unsureness about it in the beginning piece. If I think about the kinds of regrets that I have, it’s the regrets of not starting something earlier and not doing something earlier – not seeing a therapist earlier, or not opening up to people about certain struggles earlier. It’s about the fact that I didn’t start earlier, is where I have the biggest amount of regrets.

If I think back to myself in those times, yeah, of course I didn’t feel ready. And I still wish that I had done those things then. I really want to hammer this message home: that, one, you’re never going to feel completely ready before you start recovery – and if you’re waiting for that to happen, then it’s really unlikely that it will happen; and two, your future self will really thank you for the fact that you didn’t wait to feel ready, and that you actually got started.

It’s then a really useful thing that you take into all of these other areas of life – to know that, “Hey, I can have uncertainty about a situation and I can still take action. I don’t have to know 100% that this is going to be fine before I make any moves. I can say, you know what? I’m going to do this thing, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll then figure it out. Life and so many of the aspects of life are figure-out-able, and I know that I can get started with this thing and then I can course-correct.”

00:24:21

Run the experiment and see what happens

So much of recovery is an experiment. Let’s run this experiment and let’s see what happens, because for so many people, they’ve been living in the ‘what if?’ world for a very long time, running all of the different potential outcomes that could occur in their mind, but then not actually ever running the experiment to see what actually happens.

And when I say run the experiment, that experiment could be “I’m doing this thing for a week to run a particular change and see what happens”, but I would also say running the experiment of “Let me genuinely try and do recovery for the next 6 months or a year and see what happens.” Because for many people, that amount of time is a miniscule amount of time compared to how long this thing has been going on for.

If you listen to my last solo episode looking at ‘Recovery Is Hard, But Living With an Eating Disorder Is Harder’, I think there’s a lot in there that will also connect to this idea.

So that is it for this episode. As I said at the top, I’m currently taking on new clients. If you’re interested in no longer having an eating disorder and reaching a place of full recovery and really getting your life back, then I would love to help. You can send an email to info@seven-health.com, and as part of that, just put in the subject line ‘coaching’ and then I can send over further details.

That is it for this week’s episode. I will be back hopefully next week with another new episode. Until then, take care of yourself, and I will see you soon.

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