Rest Is Hard. Here’s How to Do It Anyway (Featuring Allison)
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Georgie: [00:00:00] You are listening to breaking up with Binge Eating. If you're a regular listener, welcome back and thanks for your support. If this is your first listen, welcome. I'm Georgie Fear, Registered Dietician and Binge Eating Disorder Specialist. My philosophy on treatment includes supporting people in many areas of life in addition to meeting their nutrition needs.

Eating disorder recovery certainly involves modifying your eating. This surprises nobody, but what many people don't notice until they do is how much your other life habits feed into the disorder, but they also pave the path out of it. Things like how you work, rest, play, handle relationships, give and receive help and talk to yourself.

If someone just works on the food piece of their life, they often can't completely escape from the symptoms. They may relapse into binge eating again, or they might replace it with a different coping behavior. So in a nutshell, that's why this podcast covers such a broad spectrum of topics, aside from food. And the people building those skills are actually my heroes.

You may remember my client, Allison, from an episode in September, 2025, where we talked about how including joyful activities just for her like crocheting granny Squares, was a critical missing piece up until now of her recovery from binge eating disorder. Today you'll hear another real life recording of one of my sessions with Allison this time hitting on some new themes.

For example, we talk about why taking rests is actually hard to do, perhaps just as hard as doing something fun for herself. When your default mode is work, work, sleep, cook, clean work, and your mind is always looking for another way you can be more productive. You can face very real cognitive resistance when you try to slow down. [00:02:00] Your brain will throw up all sorts of reasons why you can't or shouldn't do that. So to overcome, we need to anticipate and be ready for those thoughts, armed with responses. Join in as I teach Allison how to do that today and scoop up some ideas for yourself. This isn't a zero sum game.

We can all be learning, strengthening ourselves, and winning together. If you feel like taking a rest or doing something just for fun, seems uncomfortable, unacceptable, or even impossible, 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.

Allison: Hi.

Georgie: Hi! How are you doing?

Allison: Good, good. Just back to back to back things today. So I apologize for, for being

Georgie: No problem. Take a breather. Take a breather. Ah, what's keeping you so busy today?

Allison: Just a lot of work calls. This whole week has been like productive discussion and, and everything. But when you're in all day meetings for half the week, that means the rest of the week backs up. So,

Georgie: totally. Yeah. I can understand and only imagine some of the difficulty that you're wading through right now.

Allison: You know, it is, it's tough. It's tough right now. Things will stabilize. It always does, right. It's just a matter of when.

Georgie: Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure. Well, how are you doing personally outside of your you know, job role?

Allison: Okay. July was crazy, especially with racing. But that's done now. This past weekend was our last, like, big race for a while, so I've, our cars are not okay after this weekend. There was a lot of [00:04:00] damage. So I have a lot to work on, but weekends should be a little bit more normal now, which is really good. And so that'll be a relief.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: So that's good. Still doing pretty well on the medication, pretty well on the like I feel pretty good. My brain still feels pretty good. I'm really, really grateful for that. So that's been good. I've been trying to walk and stuff. I wasn't great over the last couple of weeks at doing the tracker. I went through it a little bit today and like

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: You know kind of went back to when I was reading my book and, and things like that.

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: So I have, I have done some things. The one thing that I've really, that I really still have been struggling with is kind of like the whole meal planning thing and like being able to set aside time to do that and time to make sure that I'm like getting all the fibers and things that I should be getting.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: So I feel like that's definitely a thing to work on. And I also feel as though, again, I'm, I'm losing the. Like when things get crazy with work, like this week, haven't really walked this week. I did walk on Monday, but haven't really walked this week. Haven't really, you know done much other than like work and do things that kind of have to be done rather than, creating space for myself.

Georgie: Is that a necessity that you just can't do anything about?

Allison: No, I don't think so. I think it's just me and the way my brain is working and I need to kind of like break out of that. You know, like I've definitely been scrolling more. Definitely been, you know, like numbing. So I really, it is hard, like I wanna break out of that, but it's, it's really difficult.

Georgie: Mm-hmm.

Allison: But I don't think it's like something that [00:06:00] I can't, like I have the capacity to do the thing. I just have to find something that works and really stick with it. Like have the discipline stick with it.

Georgie: Yeah.

What some people do is they cold Turkey from something just for a short period of time so that they have a better chance at moderation when they add it back in.

So for example, one of my clients just unplugged her television for like a week and then she didn't wanna like stop watching television for the rest of her life. But thereafter she, like, during that week, she found that she was like, had to fill that time with something. So she's found other things to do with her time.

And so then she had more success afterwards with being more moderate with the television time. Sometimes it really does help to just put a hard line in like not keeping the phone right next to your bed or, yeah, something like that.

Allison: Yeah, I may, I may need to figure something like that out because it always creeps back in, right?

Georgie: Is it like, I'll just do it for a minute and that's what,

Allison: yeah. And then, yeah. And then it's like, you know, 30 minutes, it's like, oh, I should have been doing something during that time.

Georgie: There's usually like sabotaging thoughts that we can identify when the old habits are creeping back in to stop them from creeping back in. So let's say you worked really, really hard to get all of the mosquitoes out of your tent when you're camping. And then you open the zipper to, I don't know, throw a hiking boot out and three mosquitoes flying, and you're like, that's fine. And then. you've now invited them in. Like you, you sort of, this is a terrible example because I didn't think of it in advance, but like if you just like, oh well yeah, I can just let a few in. I can just let a few in.

Allison: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Georgie: I can spend a few minutes scrolling. I can spend a few minutes scrolling. Eventually you're just gonna go back, so you sort of have to hold the line. Like, if I want to keep no mosquitoes in this tent, I have to shoot all of them out every time.

Allison: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Georgie: So we hear this to, to more of an extreme example when people have, like, if you think, if you know anybody that struggled with alcohol abuse, the I'll just have one. This time will be different. I'm just [00:08:00] gonna stop by the beer and hang out with my guys. I won't drink anything. It's like you're flirting with trouble.

Allison: Yeah. Yeah.

Georgie: So you need to recognize those thoughts that open the door to let the habit come back into more of your time and space than you want it to have and push it back out. So personal policies is a word that I use a lot. some people will set a firm line like no scrolling after 10:00 PM or no scrolling before 8:00 AM or no scrolling in the bed and enforce that. And if you find that it's crept back in and like your, your head is on the pillow and you're doing it, that's when that immediate correction needs to be made. Because if you let it go, it's just gonna creep more and more and more and more.

Allison: Right.

Georgie: So I think up until now we haven't really set a firm line

Allison: no.

Georgie: On anything. We talked about. Maybe limiting the number of minutes before the app would sort of cut you off. did we talk about that?

Allison: I do have a one hour thing on my social media. I've been better at either not hitting it or hitting it and then taking a break.

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: I typically will go back to it at some point, but like I've been better at when it happens being like, oh, that means something. So I'm gonna put it down for a little bit. But so let's talk about this. this week my scrolling, I feel like has been particularly bad because of the fact that I was charging really hard over the last couple of weeks, get ready for these leadership meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, right? I'm new to my role I felt like I had a lot of holes in my brain, and I hate that, right?

Like, I gotta close the holes, I gotta understand what's going on. I have to figure it out. And so for like the last week or so, particularly last week, [00:10:00] leading into this week I've been charging hard, looking through reports, talking to people, getting, you know, trying to get the low down. Asking questions like really, and then once the meetings happened, right?

So I presented on Tuesday. Right.

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: Yesterday morning the meetings didn't start until 11, and so I had like time in the morning to, I was supposed to be doing stuff, but like, I was like numbed out.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: Right. And today been numbed out and it could be because I went so hard for like a week. Right? And then in the middle, this past weekend we had another regional with my daughter. I was like charging hard for that, trying to get the cars ready. We race the regional. Then I had these meetings Monday. I think I worked until like seven 30 or eight getting ready. You know, I worked Tuesday morning, getting ready, finally got all the things that I needed, right? Connecting all the dots, putting all the pieces together. And then I like, kind of had this, I left the meeting on Tuesday after presenting. I presented last, I presented for like over an hour. We were talking about a bunch of stuff, and I had a tension headache.

Tuesday evening, right. And I was like, we're going out to dinner, not cooking. We went to sushi. but I think as a consequence, i've just like, my brain I think needs to process and like, instead of like going out for a walk or you know, doing other things while I'm processing, I literally just sat there and scrolled Facebook for like hours at a time.

Georgie: Yeah, it sounds to me. Like you're expecting yourself to go outside and process and take a walk or do something that's slightly more effortful, but you've already drained your battery down to zero.

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: So potentially you, like, if you're gonna go take a walk, you need to catch your battery when you've still got five to 10% left.

Because if you can catch it when you've got five to 10% left, you [00:12:00] have a little bit to get yourself out the door and a little bit of willpower to say, no, no, no. Put down the phone. Does that make sense?

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: And it's a habit. I mean, I'm sure if we analyze all of our cell phone habits or. How often we put it on the charger. We'd all have different patterns. Some people let it go until it's dead and then they put it on the charger.

Allison: Yeah. Yeah.

Georgie: Some people charge it every time they sit in a particular chair because the charger's right there. And so we're sort of the same with your gas tank in your car. Like do you wait until the gaslight comes on to refill it or do you refill it when you hit a half tank or quarter tank?

Allison: Yeah,

Georgie: the same way we run our own batteries. If your habit has been running your battery all the way down to zero and then wondering why you only feel capable of like brain dead scrolling. That's the thing, you run your battery all the way down. In retrospect, sometimes it's easier to look at our choices and say, okay, if I had done this a little bit differently, I could have possibly taken the walk. Can you see an opportunity where you could've inserted that rest a little bit earlier in the battery drain?

Allison: Oh yeah. I mean, there was probably plenty of opportunity for me to do that. I mean, I, think even if I had a regular kind of like, oh, okay, at this time of the day I'm gonna go for a walk.

Georgie: Right?

Allison: Like, that would even recharge my battery. Or you know, for some reason, and It is been a long time. It's been years. cause I was a work at home employee. I was a, I was a remote employee long before COVID. Right. But we were charging so hard for so long that you know, like I felt like because I worked at home, I needed to make every single minute productive.

And like I would wake up, you know, in the morning, get my kids to school or whatever, like the nanny would come and then I would just be at my computer. And I always felt, especially with my mom was taking care of my kids that like I, that work. Ha, that time had to be work time. cause honestly, when my kids were younger and my mom was taking care of them for a part of the day.

If I like in the middle of the day, were like, okay, I'm gonna [00:14:00] go for a walk. My mom would be like, well then why am I here? Like, I'm here so that you can work.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: and so I would be like, no, if it's working hours, I gotta be working. And I would pressure myself to like be productive, you know, during the day for hours on end because I had that help here and I would have to do that. And I conditioned myself that like. This time is only for these things. Right? And if you're not done, you have to get done. Right? Which is why I worked until seven 30 on Monday night because I was like, now that I have all the information I need, I gotta get this stuff done for tomorrow. Right? But my mentality isn't, oh you know what? I'm gonna take a 10 minute break in the middle of the day and go for a walk. ' cause that will recharge me. And like, you know, I'm wearing myself out, right? That kind of stuff doesn't occur to me because if I had done that, like for years when my kids were little, like if I had done that, I, you know, had a person here that would take monumental offense to that.

Like, why are you going to the gym in the middle of the day?

Georgie: Yeah, yeah. Totally.

Allison: Go to the gym after like when you're done working. And again like having my mother here means I've never had to put my kids in daycare but like that pressure of like I need to get shit done. Like that's how my brain is conditioned at. Now my kids are 11 and almost 16. My daughter's outside watching movies like she don't care where I'm at. Like she's fine.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: And my son is fishing in a pond somewhere out there. Like I don't even know where he is right now. So like, you know, mother of the year, but you know, mom, I'm going fishing. Like it's not as though I have to watch them. Like I don't need to do that.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: Now that is how my brain is conditioned.

Georgie: Conditioned to do what?

Allison: To just like during working hours, I have to work no matter if my battery's low, if I can't concentrate, like we gotta make that happen. Right.

Georgie: Okay. So you have to work [00:16:00] solid during designated working hours. Are you willing or interested in changing that setting?

Allison: Oh god, I would love to.

Georgie: Okay. I didn't mean to ask the obvious, but it's important to establish before I go about pushing for a change that you're like, I'm not sure I wanna make,

Allison: I would love to. I would also love to get up in the morning. 'cause again, my kids. Especially like so they don't go back to school for a month. Like I would love to get up at seven 30 in the morning, not scroll my phone. Right. Get up. It's cool in the morning, right? Or cooler in the morning.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: I would love to get up and go for a walk first thing in the morning, but what I do is I fiddle fuck around on my phone and like looking at my phone memories and all that stuff. And then it's eight o'clock and then it, it's like, oh, well it's work time now. I can't go for that walk. And like, so now it's work time until I get off the phone with you. And then it's dinner making time and figuring out dinner.

Georgie: Yeah.

Allison: And then after dinner it is working on car time and doing that, like, you know, so it's like all of these responsibilities in a row. And then I end up not doing anything and it's the end of the day and it's like, well, that's done.

Georgie: Yeah. So I agree with you. I think this is a really fruitful area to look at. that belief that I have to work straight through. If it's work hours, I cannot be not working during work hours. What would be a better definition or the most reasonable, like if you were to ask the most reasonable, wise, chill, healthy perspective person that you can imagine, how much should I be working during work hours?

Is it a percent, is it a, most of the time? Is it, does it vary day to day? Like, what's a healthy perspective on this? If you could take a stab at it.

Allison: I don't even know. I mean,

Georgie: that's totally fair.

Allison: To be honest with you, like, you know, my brain always goes to, well, if I wasn't in front of my computer for at least eight hours, if not 10 hours that day, it was not a work day.

Georgie: Okay. So some ways that people may define this, they would say that during those work [00:18:00] hours, they are intermittently working along with attending to body needs, like going to the bathroom, right? Most people wouldn't be like, no, you can't go to the bathroom. It's, you're supposed to be at your desk. Right? Like we're used to giving people the slack to go use the restroom, and we're used to giving people slack to go get a drink of water or a midday meal. So I think we're. Working with that same logic that people need to meet their needs. You can't like just put them in a room and be like, go eight hours and you know, stopping. But the amount of work that you get done may be the same, whether you spend seven and a half hours at your computer or seven and a quarter hours at your computer or seven hours.

But if you only spend two hours there, you might not be able to get enough done. So it sounds like a lot of the work you do is your attendance at meetings, so like your attendance and attention. At a meeting, it's generally expected that you'll stay from beginning of the end to the end of the meeting, but most people have, you know, a calendar for the day and meetings are blocks in there, but there's spaces here and there.

And so during some of those, you may be doing other tasks like taking care of your emails. Following up with things you need to follow up with. You know, it sounds like you work interactively with a lot of other people. You may need to be typing up reports or doing actual research or compiling things.

But there can also be like, I went and took a walk in there and when I make that suggestion, or if we say, put an alarm on your phone or schedule a 10 minute walk in the middle of the work day. We might get off of this call and you say, yeah, I put a 10 minute break in my workday every day. I couldn't fit in every day, but like nine outta 10 days I took it and that went great.

Or we could put it in your calendar and the next time we talk, you say, no, I never took it. And a lot of times the difference there will be, did we get ready for the thoughts that are going to come up to try and talk you out of taking the break? Because the thoughts are gonna come up right.

Allison: 100 percent! Yes.

Georgie: What are the thoughts that will say No, no, no, no. [00:20:00] You can't take that break?

Allison: Well, okay. I just scrolled Facebook for 15 minutes, so I can't take the break.

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: I finally got into a groove where like I'm concentrating so I can't take that break. Maybe a meeting goes over and it goes over the break, right? So you're like, oh, well that meeting went over and, I can't, take that break.

Georgie: It's during work hours? So I can't take a break.

Allison: Yeah. Just too much to do. Too much to do. Can't take a break.

Georgie: Yep. It's during work hours. Too much to do. I don't have time. That's a classic. Okay.

Allison: I think the other thing that comes up. Is sometimes like, oh, I'll, you know, put in laundry. I'll do like other personal things, take precedent 'cause those things have to get done. And the walk doesn't have to get done. Right.

Georgie: Okay.

Allison: So like if I'm gonna take a break, it's to do the things that have to get done rather than like something that will recharge my battery. Right?

Georgie: Okay. So if I'm going to take a break from work, I should do other household responsibilities or childcare essentials.

Allison: Right. So like, oh, well I'll push that off. I'll do that later. I'll do that walk later. Let me go do this now. Right.

Georgie: Okay. So I think if we come up with some responses for these now I realize we're at the end of our time. Do you have two more minutes? You gotta run?

Allison: No, I'm good for two minutes. Yeah.

Georgie: Okay. So let's come up with some quick responses here. I just scrolled Facebook for 15 minutes, so I can't take a break. Any ideas?

Allison: I mean, I think you and I have talked about the fact that like you need to go do it anyway, because if you go and do the healthy thing, you'll be less likely to do the scrolling later.

Georgie: Like, whoops, that was a lousy use of time. How about I take an actual restorative break now?

Allison: Right, exactly. Yeah.

Georgie: I just got into a concentration groove.

Allison: I mean, sometimes, like my colleague is always talking about like his gazebo time, like

Georgie: mm-hmm.

Allison: You don't necessarily have to be at your desk to be working like, if he needs, some space from his computer or whatever, he'll go out to his [00:22:00] gazebo and like sit and he's still thinking about work. He's still working, but it's a little bit more restorative than like just sitting and staring at something. Like, yeah, okay, I'm in a groove, but like I can still be thinking about stuff and take a 10 minute walk.

Georgie: Yeah, I can keep thinking about this and take a stroll. The meeting ran long so I can't take a break.

Allison: I mean, sometimes that's true.

Georgie: That is true. Sometimes that's true. But a short break can also do a lot of good, even two or three minutes.

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: During work hours. I'll do this. It's not realistic to try and work 100% of work hours.

Allison: Yeah. And when you work from home, work hours is relative too. I mean, if you take a 15 minute break, you can always, like, after dinner, sometimes I'll sit at my computer and like bang out a couple of emails that I didn't get to, you know do during the day. Like it's not,

Georgie: yeah. And if you don't take a quality break, you'll end up doing the brain dead scrolling.

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: So take a good break even during work hours I have too much to do. Response might be, I also have a lot of time. Like, yes, I have a lot to do, but I also have time, and so I can take a few minutes and come back and still get a lot done.

And we are more productive if we're taking breaks than if we're not taking breaks and doing the Brain dead scroll.

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: All right. I have too much to do. I will come back and get more done after my break.

Allison: And if you're talking about like hard lines, I think maybe a hard line I have to take is like I cannot scroll during work hours. Like I cannot do it. I can do any, like literally anything else. But I cannot scroll during work hours. I can't do it.

Georgie: Okay. Are you interested in trying that out?

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: Nice.

Allison: That is one that I'm interested in trying out.

Georgie: Okay. I want you to write that down somewhere. Put it in writing. I'm gonna put it on your tracker. That also means you need to have a defined beginning and end to your work hours.

Allison: So I was just thinking that , I'm writing, I will not scroll and I don't even think [00:24:00] it's between in work hours. Like, I think it's like during the day, like when I want my productive day to be I will not scroll between the hours of 7:00 AM and 5:00 PM.

Georgie: Okay, cool. I don't have time. Yes, I have time. I have time to get it all done. If I have time to, if I have time to binge, I have time to take a walk.

Allison: Yes. Absolutely.

Georgie: Okay. Last one. I have more important things like other tasks to do.

Allison: Recharging your battery is important.

Georgie: Yes. All right, so we're gonna, you set this line, this personal policy, no scrolling, seven to five. Now you need to defend it against any creep. So if you're seeing the 6 59 click over to seven. You gotta stop. Because there's no point in having boundaries if we let our boundaries be too porous and we make an exception more than we often like Hold the boundary. Also, I'd let yourself off the case when it comes to scrolling.

Allison: I even highlighted it.

Georgie: Ah, I love it. Defend against habit creep. I would also say get off your own case about scrolling before seven and after five. Like, I would just let yourself do it. If that helps you succeed, be like, I can scroll for four hours straight once it gets to 5:00 PM but I'm not gonna break this personal policy. It can help. It can help. So really keep your focus on that piece itself.

Allison: Okay.

Georgie: Sound doable?

Allison: Yeah.

Georgie: Okay. Shoot me a text if anything comes up. Any questions, you need a pep talk. But you know how to do this.

Allison: Awesome. Thank you. Yeah,

Georgie: I think you can. I'm gonna take off the start the day with the stretch instead of the phone 'cause we're just focusing on something else right now.

Allison: Okay.

Georgie: We're gonna keep trying to do something for joy each day.

Allison: Yes.

Georgie: You can do that during your break right? Keep up the protein and fruit or veggies at meals, which see you've been doing great at recently.

Allison: Yes. Yeah. I've really been trying, like even even last night at the track, we had dinner at the track. So the one my go-to thing is a cheeseburger. 'cause it's like burger cheese bun. I put pickles, lettuce tomato, you know, so I have like veggies [00:26:00] and protein and whatever, and like, it's not fried. You know, at least it's, something that has like all the food groups in it.

Georgie: Yeah, totally. It's a sandwich. I think that's pretty good. I think that's pretty good. Any other questions for me that we didn't get to?

Allison: No, no! Thank you. Yeah, this is great.

Georgie: Okay. Hopefully I haven't thrown you too off track. Keep breathing.

Allison: No, this was great. This is awesome.

Georgie: Awesome. Keep me posted. I'll talk to you in two weeks.

Allison: Take care!

Georgie: Bye bye.