Ready for Week 3 of the Reverse Your Insulin Resistance Challenge?  Let’s go!

We're talking urges, cravings and buffers this week.  This is powerful work.  

Monday Motivation:  What are the ways you buffer?  Food, social media, shopping, sleeping, procrastination?  All of the above?

What are the negative consequences of buffering in your life? Poor health, weight gain, not achieving your goals, not getting the grade you want, feeling a lot of negativity?

How will you manage your urges to give in to buffering? Start recognizing when you have an urge and think about stimulus control and contingency management that I talked about last week.  You can create an environment and a plan to help decrease your urges and cravings that lead you to buffering. 

Tuesday Tracking:  What times of day do you have urges and cravings and tend to buffer with food?  Write it down.  What are some of the trigger foods for you that once you start eating them you get in kind of a fog?  It’s okay.  You can learn to eat those in moderation.

Get foods on your plan that serve you if you are hungry and have an urge, craving or desire to buffer.

Wednesday Wisdom:  After you allow about 100 urges, the urges will start to dissipate. Allowing an urge means feeling your emotions that are coming up instead of looking to an external source like food to fix your feelings.  Since buffering with food is what you do to avoid pain, when you stop buffering, you will feel pain.  The emotion is still there even when you buffer with food.  You can handle it.  You can learn the skill to allow your human emotions. 

I really like the book, “LiveWired” by David Eagleman a neuroscientist, researcher and writer at Stanford.  It’s so interesting.  His research shows that our brains are malleable and adaptable if we challenge our brains.  What we focus on we create more of.  Keep giving all your power away to urges, you will keep buffering and stay stuck!  Start challenging your brain and start allowing your emotions and you will be well on your way to break the cycle! You can unstuck (is this a word) your brain! So cool and nerdy!

Thursday Thoughts: What emotions are you attempting to avoid when you buffer?

What are your thoughts that cause your emotions you are trying to avoid when you buffer? Take some time and get curious. You are creating self-awareness.  You are not your thoughts and thoughts are optional. 

Friday Fun: Can you shift to other thoughts that serve you?  How can you enjoy food, keep it simple, and have an exciting life?  What are you doing for fun this weekend?  Focus on what’s fun instead of what is a short-term pleasure like a sugary dopamine zing.

Saturday Success:  Get an urge jar that creates evidence for yourself that you are figuring this out.  Only count the positives.  Put a bead or marble or $1 in every time you allow an urge instead of buffering.  Now, how will you celebrate your wins?  Of course, I’m going to suggest not using food as your main way to celebrate.

Sunday Strategy:    What are the ways that you showed up as your Future Self this week?  What did you learn about yourself? Spend some time asking yourself these important questions: What are your true pleasures in life?  What’s meaningful?  If you’re a teen, maybe you don’t know yet, so you get to figure this out.  So fun!

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