"I've been so good, I can afford it" -The Overconfidence Trap
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Georgie: [00:00:00] James was on a very predictable rhythm. One good week, one bad week one good week, one bad week. I noticed, but I didn't say anything. Not wanting to plant any self-fulfilling predictions in his mind that every good week would turn south, but he noticed it too and said, why is it that I have a week doing all the things we talk about?

I plan my meals, I exercise, I go to bed on time. It's like I'm firing on all cylinders and it feels so good. But then I run splat into another binge, and it takes days to crawl out again. I really don't get it. I'm a mystery to myself. Looking back at the data we have from his habit tracker, there didn't seem to be a particular pattern with the day of the week. It wasn't as if every Friday was his undoing. It looked more like when James accumulated five or six days of not binge eating on the sixth or seventh day breakfast and lunch went smoothly, but he bought binge foods on the way home from work and from there the old pattern took over. If you feel like your own behavior has become predictably rhythmic, like James, and you'd like to understand and stop that pattern, this episode is for you.

This is the breaking up with binge eating podcast, where every listen moves you one step closer to complete food freedom. Hosted by me, Georgie fear and my team at confident eaters.

Christina: The trackers we use with our clients are an online document where we coaches and our clients can look at patterns over time in their eating behaviors. No, it's not like a tracking collar where we zap you if you enter the ice cream aisle at Costco. It's more like a daily checklist checking off each time they do one of the skills we've talked about is an opportunity for clients to give themselves a high five, feeling a bit of accomplishment with each little X in the [00:02:00] box. Plus who doesn't like the organization of having your eating priorities laid out in a short list? You don't forget something important or get lost in the weeds, worrying about unnecessary details.

I see exactly what Georgie's client James described all the time with my clients too. Sometimes it's a weekend pattern or a time of the month pattern, or every time I get paid pattern or every time my in-laws visit pattern.

Using the data from those daily checklists can often help us not only predict when future struggles will occur, it can shed light on what the cause is.

Georgie: In James Case, his most recent slide from firing on all cylinders to binging after work happened just a day ago, so it was still fresh in his mind. I had him walk me through the day and asked him my usual questions about his emotional state, triggers, mindset and attention. As we focused in, we got to his initial idea to stop at the convenience store. He actually decided not to stop and kept driving, but then he had the idea to pull into a fast food chain to buy binge foods. I focused him on the eight or nine minutes between deciding to drive past seven 11, seemingly choosing not to binge, and then hitting the turn signal, deciding to pull into the fast food restaurant, and there it was tumbling right out in his stream of consciousness recollection. "I've been so good, I can afford it."

Christina: Ah, a classic.

Georgie: Right? This is an unhelpful thought. We hear pretty regularly.

Christina: This thought seems especially cruel because it tends to strike when someone is doing well and having success only to throw them off their game. I have heard it in weight loss clients as well, who see an initial drop on the scale and start to let their guard down figuring they're doing such a good job, they can take a break.

But of course if you stop doing what is working, it stops working. Pushing back against this thought can be a bit tricky because on its surface it [00:04:00] seems true with other unhelpful thoughts like Everyone hates me, we can prove relatively quickly that it's not true. After all, if your wife, kids, and dog love you, not everyone hates you, but it usually is true that someone has been doing well.

James was probably making a lot of healthy decisions and getting lots of his squares checked off each day.

Georgie: He was, so it's not an outright lie. Even the second half of the problematic thought, the, I can get away with it, part isn't an obvious fallacy. James was not gonna be arrested and thrown in jail for eating a couple value meals. One meal of any kind does not impact our long-term health in a meaningful way, so we can't counter this line of thinking with a direct opposite, like, I haven't been doing that well, or I can't get away with it. Those would be completely ineffectual. Instead, we wanna identify this thought as an example of the overconfidence trap. So if you hear your brain serving up thoughts, I've been so good, or I can get away with it.

I can afford it. I deserve it, after such a good week. I haven't binged in so long. I want a little alarm bell to ring in your mind. If you hear any of those and say, be careful, that can be overconfidence talking. Most of the people we work with at Confident Eaters would never describe themselves in a million years as being overconfident. So if that's you, I don't want you to instantly assume this doesn't apply to you. trap is one that easily ensnares people who generally have low confidence 99% of So when a feeling of confidence or success is so rare, it's easy to get a little carried away because it feels so good, and use that to license yourself to make decisions that end your success. basically, we defeat this trap by learning how to be wisely, rationally confident.

Christina: Before we get into what it looks and sounds like, I wanna [00:06:00] mention that this same trap can present itself in the grocery aisle, when a person thinks that gigantic container of ice cream is a great deal, I can handle it now. I haven't binged in a long time. Maybe I'm cured. A related place this trap can lure people in is when they have had a period of time without binge eating, say a month, and they think they can now safely go on a diet, track calories, or cut out sugar because they're cured of binge eating. I wish this were true. I really do. But one month after breaking your leg, you can't throw your crutches to the side and enter a high jump competition. It has not been long enough. You need to progress in small, incremental levels like step up, weight-bearing, walking, all the things they make you do at physical therapy. So to recap, quickly look out for the overconfidence trap when you see signs of progress. When you notice things are going well, such as you have lots of check marks in your tracker, your binges or emotional overeating incidents have become rarer.

It can pop up as the urge to buy binge foods or take a lot of food home from a party or start making weight loss moves.

Georgie: Here's what to do instead. When you see those signs of progress, it's awesome to be happy. Give yourself credit because you are the person who earned it. the overconfidence trap might say, I can celebrate with a box of donuts wise and rational confidence sounds like, "Go me. Let me notice what's working and keep doing that."

If I keep doing it, it will keep working. If managing your sleep and stress being more open with your partner or planning your foods out ahead of time has gotten you this far, don't stop using those tactics wise and rational confidence is also not black or white or all or nothing. There isn't one day when you just switch to being cured of disorder, eating patterns, and you don't have to be careful any longer. It's a gradual shift that occurs over months. As your mental [00:08:00] and behavioral skills strengthen, you can handle a little more challenge bit by bit. Your confidence can and will grow, but we want it to always be accompanied by an appropriate level of caution to protect your progress and keep you moving forward in recovery.

Christina: When a client is ready to try a new skill out or take on something new, we like to encourage baby steps, especially if you've been prone to overconfidence traps in the past. When someone is in recovery from binge eating and is feeling good with what they've maintained for a while, they may want to pursue weight loss.

One of the ways we support clients through this transition is by practicing things like waiting for hunger before you eat. This is how you can approach it with baby steps, just to give you an example. First, you can start by noticing whether or not you are hungry for your meals. Then you can progress to waiting for hunger for one meal per day, even if it's just for 15 minutes at first.

Then you can increase that to two meals. Et cetera. Then you can increase the length of time you feel hungry to about 30 minutes. The important thing is that you move forward only when you've gotten a week or two of practice or more with each skill. The same can be true for clients of ours who have decided not to keep certain foods in the house because they find it difficult to moderate when they're stressed or feeling vulnerable to binge.

If you decide you wanna bring foods that you used to binge back in the house, it would be wise not to start with the family size bag from Costco. Single serve or individual packages can help support your environment as you experiment with whether it's helpful to keep those cookies or chips in the house.

One of my clients is practicing the skill of managing her troubled foods, and she recently hosted a party where she gave out goody bags to her guests, which were filled with chocolate, which is previously one of her binge foods. After she prepared the bags, there were some leftovers. She wasn't quite comfortable with keeping it in the house, so she decided that she would pass out any [00:10:00] extra chocolate to her neighbors.

Another practical way you can ensure you won't fall into the overconfidence trap is surrounding yourself with some extra support. This could be a coaching group, a one-on-one coach helping you through this transition, or an accountability partner.

Georgie: Have you fallen into the overconfidence trap before? Could you use the information in this podcast to skirt around it the next time? We hope so. If you need additional support or you wanna find out more about what it's like to work with us from anywhere in the world, send me an email at Georgie fear@gmail.com. Have a fantastic, well cared for day.