Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Diabetes with Delane MD podcast.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: This is episode 219, I believe. I'm your host.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: I'm Dr. Delane Vaughn. I'm a board certified family practice doctor, a former emergency room nurse, and a veteran healthcare provider. This podcast is for women who are not ready to let go of their longevity, their vitality, and their vigor. It's for women who know that life is a gift. They're not ready to start the downward.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Spiral of type two diabetes and diseases that are similar.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: This podcast is for badass women who've mastered many hard things in other areas of their life, but can't seem to master chocolate cake. If this is you, let's talk today we are going to talk about planning. I've been promising this podcast for a little bit now, so we're going to talk about how to use planning as a tool. Stay tuned. At the end of the month, there is going to be a webinar. I'm hosting a webinar that is going to talk about planning and how to use planning as a tool for overcoming emotional eating. It's going to be just in time for the Halloween holiday and all of the upcoming holidays so you can start to practice this as a tool. Before we get started, I do want to remind you if you are on medications for your type two diabetes, please be careful implementing the changes that I recommend during this podcast and these podcast episodes. You've been medicated because of how you've eaten in the past and if you change the way you eat, you're going to need to change your medications. Also, please call your primary care provider or whoever your provider is that has given you these meds and get a line of communication open with them. Figure out how they want you to share your blood sugars with them and how they intend to share medication adjustments with you so that you can start adjusting those meds down. This is going to keep you safe. If you don't do this, you can end up in the emergency room and the hospital and even like coma like situations and death. Please avoid that. Call your doctor, let them know what.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: You'Re going to do. Do this smart and be careful with it.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: I want to encourage you to like this podcast. Rate this podcast, share it with your friends, share it on your social media, follow me on Instagram, follow me on Facebook, it's delanemd on both of those platforms. And then join the Delanemd Reversing Diabetes Facebook group. It's a great group full of lovely women who are out there interested in doing the same work that you're interested in doing.
[00:02:19] Speaker C: They're very helpful.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: It's a wonderful community.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: I highly recommend it. Lastly, don't forget there is more help.
[00:02:26] Speaker B: In a reverse your diabetes assessment call. Those are 45 minutes calls where you and I get on a Zoom call and we talk about what your biggest obstacles are and why you're struggling to overcome them.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: You'll get real clear on that.
[00:02:38] Speaker B: You can hear more about working in the group with me. If you're interested in that, you can.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Get some help that way.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: So today, let's talk about planning. We're going to talk about what it.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: Is, why it's important.
[00:02:48] Speaker B: I'm going to give you some great.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Examples and then talk about how to do it.
[00:02:52] Speaker B: I used to believe that plans were things that limited me, and I think that a lot of women see it this way. I think we see plans as something that is going to cause us to have to do less of what we want to do or limit the things.
[00:03:06] Speaker A: That we want to do. And anymore, I do not teach plans like that.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: I teach plans entirely different. So I saw when I would make.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Food plans that I stopped making the.
[00:03:19] Speaker B: Food plan because it limited. I felt limited. I couldn't do the things I wanted to do. Of course, my brain was like, I'm a grown ass woman. I can eat whatever I want whenever I want it. I don't need some little book or some little plan telling me how I.
[00:03:30] Speaker A: Should be doing it. I found that very inhibitory, and so.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: I didn't use them.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: And what this gave me was a.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Result of being about 15 extra pounds on my body, having 15 extra pounds that I didn't want on my body. It gave me insulin resistance, and it gave me prediabetes.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: Ironically, that is never what I would.
[00:03:51] Speaker B: Have planned for, right? Like, if I had planned my life, I would have been 15 pounds lighter. I wouldn't have been insulin resistant. I would not have been pre diabetic. Okay, so it's really ironic that I saw the plan as something that limited me. I think of this in the irony of it, and I find it a little hilarious.
[00:04:07] Speaker A: So what I didn't realize at the.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Time, though, was that every time that I allowed myself to, quote unquote, be a grown ass woman, I acted like a petulant child. I acted from that primitive brain space, and when I acted from that space, I reinforced the behavior that was leading me to extra pounds on my body, insulin resistance, and type two diabetes.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: The plan that I had made in my little book, right? My little planner that came from the.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: Wisdom of my prefrontal cortex. It reconciled the pros and the cons.
[00:04:40] Speaker A: Of my day with the food goals.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: And my health goals that I had. But in the moment when I felt hurried or stressed or hungry or angry or overwhelmed or frustrated or annoyed or.
[00:04:54] Speaker A: Anxious, pick one of them.
[00:04:56] Speaker B: When I had the feelings, this petulant child, which is really my primitive brain, would just take over.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: And I wanted what I wanted. And it wasn't the salad and the chicken. It was always the m and Ms.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: Each time I ate the m and Ms, I reinforced a pattern. I reinforced that there was a trigger of a feeling, whether it be overwhelm or whatever the feel, the stressor feelings. That trigger led to a behavior of.
[00:05:22] Speaker A: Eating the food, and that led to.
[00:05:25] Speaker B: A reward of either short term avoidance.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: Of the discomfort of the feeling or.
[00:05:31] Speaker B: The dopamine release in my brain that created this feeling of ease in the moment. That made it seem easier in the moment.
What this did was the next time I felt hurried or stressed or hungry or angry or overwhelmed or frustrated or anxious or annoyed. Whatever the feeling, my brain drove me with such a force to eat those foods again.
[00:05:51] Speaker A: To repeat this cycle, this loop, not following the plan, kept me stuck in that loop.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: It led me to a result, which was disease that I did not plan for. Again, funny. And that I didn't really want. So let's talk about what plans actually are. A plan is a tool that you.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Can use to make your life easier.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: This is what I have learned about plans. They are tools that keep that prefrontal.
[00:06:20] Speaker A: Cortex in the driver's seat, even when.
[00:06:24] Speaker B: The primitive brain is trying to take.
[00:06:26] Speaker A: Over, even when you're experiencing the transient.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Feelings that bring that primitive brain online and into the driver's seat. We have something that's come from our.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Prefrontal cortex that has weighed the pros.
[00:06:40] Speaker B: And the cons and made a decision in our best interest.
[00:06:44] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:06:45] Speaker A: Plans make your life easier.
[00:06:48] Speaker B: They keep you out of decision fatigue. They keep your mental energy from being drained.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: They keep you on the path to.
[00:06:56] Speaker B: What you want long term.
And when we get really good at just following the plan, even when things.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Seem out of control or chaotic, we.
[00:07:07] Speaker B: Just do the plan. It makes everything go so much faster and so much easier.
[00:07:12] Speaker A: Okay, so why is a plan important?
[00:07:16] Speaker C: One.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Like I said, it makes it easier.
[00:07:19] Speaker A: A plan is important, and it makes.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: It easier, and it makes it quicker, because it keeps the decisions on the behavior that you are having. Those decisions are coming from your prefrontal cortex, even when your primitive brain is engaged.
[00:07:33] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:07:35] Speaker B: When you're feeling all of those feelings.
[00:07:37] Speaker A: The frustration, the anger, the hunger, the.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Irritation, the annoyance, the overwhelm, the hurriedness. When you're feeling those feelings, your primitive brain starts to take over. Those are panic feelings. Those are stress feelings. Your primitive brain starts to take over, and all it wants to do is protect you from those things.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: It's not trying to wreak havoc, it's.
[00:07:56] Speaker B: Not trying to make you sick. It's not trying to create disease in your body. It just wants to make things feel a little better. That's all it wants to do. But the primitive brain starts to take.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Over, and this is never going to.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Get you to the goals that you want long term. It's never going to get you to the thing that you'd planned for yourself. It's never going to get you to the goals that you have planned for you.
Plans also give you the opportunity. In addition to making things easier and making things happen quicker, plans give you the opportunity to really find out why.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: You'Re resistant to a behavior, whatever it is. So if you're having the feelings, that's a trigger lead to a behavior which.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: Is eating the food, which gives you a reinforcement reward of either avoiding the uncomfortable feelings or a dopamine effect.
[00:08:44] Speaker A: You need to figure out why you're resistant to not having that behavior.
[00:08:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:08:50] Speaker A: When I feel those feelings of annoyance.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: Or whatever, why am I trying to have this behavior? What is it that I'm resistant to in that stage?
[00:09:01] Speaker A: You're never going to figure that out.
[00:09:02] Speaker B: If you don't have a plan to.
[00:09:03] Speaker A: Stop doing the behavior.
So the flip side of this is.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: That the plan tells you why you are resistant to avoiding the foods, right?
[00:09:12] Speaker A: That are making you sick. You might have a feeling that you're.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: Avoiding and figuring out why you're resistant to that. But the flip side of it is also, why am I avoidant?
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Why am I resisting eating foods?
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Avoiding foods, I guess. Why am I resisting avoiding foods that make me sick? You wouldn't avoid other things that make you sick. It's not like you're out there going, oh, gosh, influenza makes me feel horrible. It makes me sick. It's hard to breathe. And I'm really struggling not getting into those situations with everybody who has the.
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Influenza when things are clearly making us sick, when we know that and we.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Know it in our heart of hearts.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: We don't have a hard time avoiding those situations.
[00:09:57] Speaker B: What is it that you believe about foods that are making you sick? That makes it really hard for you to avoid those foods. A plan is going to help you uncover those things.
[00:10:06] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:10:07] Speaker B: This is really the place where you want to start pouring your mental resources. You do not need to pour your time and energy and mental resources into.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: New diets, not into fabricating some way.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Of living your life where m and Ms are no longer available to you. You don't need to pour your time into finding an accountability. Budy, that's fabulous. You don't need to do any of those things.
[00:10:28] Speaker A: You don't need a new diet.
[00:10:29] Speaker B: You don't need a combination lock on the candy drawer that you don't know the combination so you can stay out of the M and Ms. You don't need that. And you don't need some amazing accountability, budy. What you need is to start looking at why you feel you cannot go for me, why I felt like could not go without the M and Ms. If it's not eminems, if it's chocolate cake, if it's donuts, if it's chips.
[00:10:49] Speaker A: If it's pizza, whatever it is, you.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: Need to look at why you feel that you can't go without those foods. Your brain, when you start to ask it to do this, is going to.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Be like, that's going to be really hard.
[00:11:01] Speaker B: Your brain is going to tell you it's going to be uncomfortable. Your brain is going to tell you that the food is going to make the hurried feeling, the stressed feeling, the hungry angry feeling, the frustrated, anxious, and annoyed. It's going to tell you that the food will make that go away. Your brain is going to make up a lot of very compelling reasons why you want to turn to that food.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: These are the things that you must unpack.
[00:11:27] Speaker B: Why do you believe M and Ms make stress go away? Like, it doesn't make stress go away. You still have all the stuff you have to do on your schedule. Even if you eat the M and.
[00:11:35] Speaker A: Ms, what is it that you believe.
[00:11:38] Speaker B: Is making the stress go away? Your brain is going to say it's hard not to eat those foods. If that's what your brain is doing.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Then you need a plan.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: It's going to be hard. And then how?
[00:11:51] Speaker A: What is the plan for not eating.
[00:11:53] Speaker B: The foods that make me sick even when it's hard?
That is the plan.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: It's going to be uncomfortable because your.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Brain is going to tell you this is going to be uncomfortable. You're going to have to sit and want eminems and not eat them. And that's not fun. This is going to be uncomfortable.
[00:12:08] Speaker A: The plan then becomes, what do I want to do?
[00:12:12] Speaker B: How do I want to do the things that I need to do in the day? It be uncomfortable and me avoid foods that are going to create diabetes in my body.
[00:12:21] Speaker A: The plan solves for this. You will have days.
[00:12:25] Speaker B: I have days where I feel hurried.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: And stressed and hungry and angry and overwhelmed and frustrated and annoyed, and I still want to be healthy.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: If you have those feelings and you.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: Still want to be healthy, let's make a plan for that.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: This is the plan that you need. These are the plans that you need to fix your type two diabetes.
So if your brain just said, yeah, that's right, where do I find that plan? I want you to stay with me. I'm going to share some examples that are non food related.
[00:12:55] Speaker A: Because of course, our brain always offers.
[00:12:58] Speaker B: Us how the food is so much.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Different and how there's something different about.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Your brain and then humans brains who don't eat the food or don't struggle with this. And what I want to offer to you is all the brains are the same. Your belief about the foods are different. That's the only thing that's different.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: So to get out of that the.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Food is different component, I want to share some non food examples so you can see the mechanics of how this plan business works.
[00:13:26] Speaker A: Certainly I had to do this exact same work with my food, and I've.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Had to do it with my time.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Management and I have had to do it.
[00:13:34] Speaker B: We've all had to do this in various parts of our lives. So the first example I'm going to use is actually when I went to medical school and I had no idea of any of this work when I went to medical school.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: So many of us have been doing.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: This kind of planning in our life and we just haven't ever had it broken down for us. We haven't seen the mechanics of it.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: So when I went to medical school.
[00:13:55] Speaker B: I started medical school with one child and I ended medical school with three children.
This is clearly not in the plan books. Nobody's how to get through medical school successful plan ever had. Have multiple children while you're going through medical school. That was never anything that was advised to me by counselors. My career path counselors were never like, yeah, keep popping kids out. That was never on the plan when they would give me how to get this done advice.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: So no one had this as part of their plan.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: No one gave this as part of the advice for how to become a physician, and no one had this in their how to be successful in med school playbook.
I had to make a different plan. I was coming in with a child. Most everybody starts medical school without children. Not married, a decade younger than I was, all of those things.
[00:14:46] Speaker A: I had some ideas.
[00:14:47] Speaker B: I had some information from people about how I needed to get through med school. Like, these are the classes you have to take. This is what you have to enroll in. You have to apply for this financial aid. I had all of that given to.
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Me, but I had to figure out.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: How I was going to do all of those things and have a kid because I wasn't interested. Not that.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: I mean, I guess I could have.
[00:15:08] Speaker B: Gotten rid of my kid, but I didn't want to. I love him dearly. I wanted my baby in my life. I wanted to be a part of his life, and I wanted this career goal. I had to learn how to meld.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Both of those things together in order.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: For me to be successful.
So I had to make a plan that accommodated for both of those things.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: I had to figure it out.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Most of the people that I had.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Available to talk to did not have.
[00:15:34] Speaker B: These extra commitments during their training.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: But if I looked, I could figure.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: Out, I could use their information and.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Some other people's information, and I could.
[00:15:44] Speaker B: Ask people, and I could meld it together. And so that's what I did, and.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: I made a plan.
[00:15:49] Speaker B: So this plan initially sounded like, I know what the books say. I know what the guidance counselors have told me. I know what these other people who have gone through without kids did. I know what they say. I know what others say. Now how do I find my way? This was my challenge. This is what I had to set my brain to solve in order for.
[00:16:08] Speaker A: Me to get through my medical school training.
[00:16:12] Speaker B: The parts of my puzzle included family, which required an income, which meant I also worked. And I had to manage my medical school responsibilities and my training and my education.
So I had to ask, what are my resources?
[00:16:26] Speaker A: And then, what more do I need? I had family.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: I had a lot of family that could help me, and they did help me. I had friends, and they were very helpful. I knew people. I had some resources, so I started tapping into those resources.
[00:16:39] Speaker A: I found folks.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: They agreed. They committed to helping me. I would figure out how to plan.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: My life with their help.
[00:16:46] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: I made a plan that was, for me, it was unique to my needs.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Which was half the battle to making.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: A good plan, right? But recognized I didn't have this plan from the beginning.
[00:16:57] Speaker A: I had some ideas.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: I tried them out, and I adjusted the plan.
[00:17:01] Speaker A: I had to tweak the plan, but even my imperfect plans created the results that I wanted, right?
[00:17:08] Speaker B: I don't know that I would ever tell you. Even on the day I graduated, I don't know that I would tell you.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: That my plan was ever perfect, but it got the results that I wanted.
[00:17:17] Speaker B: Long before I got to the results, I had these imperfect plans. Again, I would love to tell you that long before the plan was perfect, but I don't even know that the plan was ever perfect.
[00:17:27] Speaker A: I had to implement a plan, and.
[00:17:30] Speaker B: Because others were involved, I had to stick to it.
[00:17:33] Speaker A: Even when chaos ensued, I had to.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: Stick with what was planned out, because this is what others had committed to helping me with. This is the gift of a plan.
[00:17:43] Speaker A: When crazy sets in and chaos sets in, you stick to the plan, and.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: Then it keeps you directed towards your goals, even when it seems like you should shift and change. You can't shift and change because you.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Got a plan, right?
[00:17:58] Speaker B: When I was working with other people who had agreed to help me watch my babies or pick my children up or whatever it might be, I was working with them. I couldn't just change my plan constantly because that affected their plan. So I actually was held to a plan. If it didn't work perfectly, then I would make changes from the prefrontal cortex, right? Like, I would make changes ahead of time and try to implement it again and see if they did work better. In the moment, though, you feel very compelled. That primitive brain wants to take over and drive, and it wants to make changes.
[00:18:32] Speaker C: Sometimes.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: Most of the time, those changes aren't going to move you in the direction.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: Of your bigger goals. Okay, so I do this to this.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Day, and I do it much more intentionally. When I was in med school, I didn't know that there was a primitive brain and a prefrontal cortex and that I was trying to work them together. And one had my best interests in mind and my bigger goals in mind, and the other one just wanted to make it easier. So when chaos ensued, what my primitive brain wanted to do was sit down and watch Netflix and screw off, right?
[00:19:00] Speaker A: It's wild.
[00:19:01] Speaker B: It's crazy. It's dangerous out there. Let's just chill and relax a minute, right? Like, I couldn't do that.
[00:19:06] Speaker A: I had to stick with the plan.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Because I had other people involved. But if my primitive brain had its own way during medical school, I would have spent a lot of time netflixing and chilling.
[00:19:16] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:19:17] Speaker A: So I had no intentionality happening there.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: It was really that I was just in a fixed situation that had to be played out in a certain way.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: But again, we're all doing this on some level.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: We all have jobs that we go to. We all have families that we're trying to take care of. We've all got commitments that we have, and we're trying to meld them together.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: And create something, create a result that we're wanting.
[00:19:40] Speaker B: Okay? And we're already doing this.
[00:19:42] Speaker A: We're making adjustments to the plan each day.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: Like, oh, I'm going to have to.
[00:19:47] Speaker A: Leave to take the kids to school.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Earlier because I've got to be at work earlier. That's always part of that plan that.
[00:19:53] Speaker A: You'Re developing to create the results you're wanting.
[00:19:57] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: I do this now with my daily planner.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: This has been work that I've been working on. It's been fun to watch from kind of a different perspective and watch as I've seen my ability to adjust and.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Make this a little different kind of unfold.
[00:20:13] Speaker C: But I do.
[00:20:14] Speaker B: With my daily planner and my daily.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Calendar, I have the plan.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: And that makes it nice because the day gets crazy. I start to feel hurried. I always feel short on time. This is just part of my life. I'm probably always going to feel short on time.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: And how do I continue to get.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: The things that I want to get done even when I'm feeling short on time?
Sticking to the plan is how I do it.
Sticking to the plan keeps me from falling into the chaos that the hurriedness wants to create.
When I'm tired, when I haven't slept enough, following the plan keeps me creating the thing that I want to create.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: When at the end of the day.
[00:20:54] Speaker B: I'm like, this is just not working. Like, I need to do something different.
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Then I just adjust the plan so.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: That I can manage the fatigue, the tiredness, the not enough sleep that I got.
[00:21:05] Speaker A: Maybe the day before, I adjust the.
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Next day's plan, but I stick to the plan for that day. If not, it all crumbles apart.
[00:21:12] Speaker C: Right.
[00:21:13] Speaker B: My primitive brain takes over. I end up taking a four hour nap in the afternoon instead of doing the things that I need to do.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Okay, giving ourselves permission to shift the plan, but shifting it from our prefrontal.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Cortex, not from the primitive brain, is.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: How we stay pointed in the direction of our goals.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Okay. Some of the ways that I've seen this play out over the last year and a half is I have had to make sure that I'm doing any creative work in the morning. That is when my creative brain is.
[00:21:41] Speaker A: Like, primed to roll. If I put creative work to the.
[00:21:46] Speaker B: Evening, it just takes a lot longer. It's a lot more frustrating. It just takes a lot more energy for me to do it. So if I can, I put all my creative work in the morning. The things that I do in the evening and in the afternoon for work.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Are things that really are just like bookkeeping.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: They're mindless puzzles that I can put together that don't really take a lot of my brain firing super efficiently. I have learned that from following a planner. Right.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: If I wasn't pushing myself to follow a calendar when things got hard, I.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Would just not do them.
[00:22:21] Speaker A: I wouldn't see that.
[00:22:22] Speaker B: Oh, I actually just performed this task better in the morning. Let's just move it to the morning.
[00:22:27] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: I know that if I'm going to.
[00:22:29] Speaker B: Be fatigued, I need to adjust my days. If I've stayed up all night working.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: If I've got a late evening or.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: Afternoon appointment, then I need to get more sleep in the morning so that I've got good energy in that later appointment time slot.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Sometimes this means, right, like, if I've got to go to bed early, that means I don't get to go out to trivia with my brother and my family and have fun on an evening because I need to get to bed early so that I can be up early to take on my day and get the things I need to get done. Done.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: If I need to sleep later in.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: The morning and we're not talking like I'm sleeping 3 hours later, if I need to sleep an extra 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour, that means that maybe I have to plan to have a shorter workout or even no workout on those days so that I can be prepped to have my afternoon meetings and be really showing up the way I want to in my afternoon meetings.
[00:23:25] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: So when we're doing these plans, we realize we have to make some hard decisions. This is what keeps us kind of in boundaries that keep us on the.
[00:23:35] Speaker A: Road to the goals that we want.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:23:38] Speaker B: It keeps you headed in the direction of your goals. That's what a plan lets you do.
[00:23:43] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:23:44] Speaker A: Where we see this with food is when we make a plan from our prefrontal cortex and then we realize that, like, oh, if I eat at 09:00 a.m.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: If I break my fast at 09:00 a.m. Come 06:00 p.m. I'm really hungry and it's hard to.
[00:24:03] Speaker A: Continue fasting for the evening. So do I have to make adjustments there?
[00:24:09] Speaker B: When I eat higher carb food at night, I notice that my blood sugars are higher in the morning. So do I need to make an adjustment and move those higher carb foods, the vegetables, the fruits, whatever it might be to earlier in the day, maybe.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:24:24] Speaker A: But if you're in this space where.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: You'Re letting chaos take over and the primitive brain take over, all that you know is that come 06:00 p.m. You're starving and it's time to eat. There's no adjustment being made to that plan, necessarily. It's not coming from the prefrontal cortex. It's coming from the primitive brain, and it's just looking to protect you. It's not necessarily looking to keep you on the path for your goals.
[00:24:49] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:24:50] Speaker B: These adjustments that need to be made are uncovering what is and isn't working about your plan. That's all that it is.
Keeping that prefrontal cortex in control even when the primitive brain wants to take.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Over, is where the magic happens.
[00:25:09] Speaker B: This is how we get to our goals. Okay? Your prefrontal cortex has left you notes for your primitive brain when it takes over, to keep you on track. That's what a plan is. It's a kind love note from your watchful mother, that prefrontal cortex that keeps you in the path towards your goals.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: This is what has to happen with your food plan so that when hurried.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: And stressed and angry and hungry and overwhelmed and frustrated and anxious and annoyed.
[00:25:40] Speaker A: Show up to your day, that it doesn't override your day.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: It doesn't take over. Your brain doesn't allow that primitive brain to take over and make decisions that are not aligned with your bigger goals.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: So how do you do it?
[00:25:57] Speaker B: I want you to start planning your food.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: This is the way to do it. Your first plan may be awful, but.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: I want you to do it, and I want you to stick to it.
[00:26:06] Speaker A: I do not want you to adjust.
[00:26:08] Speaker B: The plan in the moment. I want you to adjust the next day's plan.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: That's how you do it.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Women always want to know, I can't trust myself. I can't be around that food because I don't trust myself. You don't trust yourself because you don't hold yourself to the thing that you plan to do.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Hold yourself to that plan, make adjustments.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: For the next day. You are not going to die today if you don't have that piece of chocolate. That is not going to happen. You're going to be fine.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: You're going to be a little irritable.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: You're going to be a little discombobulated.
[00:26:36] Speaker A: You're going to be a little off.
[00:26:37] Speaker B: Kilter because you've never done it this way before.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: That's all.
[00:26:41] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Stay steady with the plan. Get really good at making plans. You have to start using that prefrontal cortex and practicing using that prefrontal cortex, practicing using the notes that your prefrontal cortex has left for your primitive brain. You have to practice making the adjustments.
[00:27:00] Speaker A: You have to decide if eating that.
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Early makes the evenings uncomfortable. Do I make a shift, yes or no? If I make the shift, do I want what comes after making the shift, yes or no? And then over time, you just start moving yourself more and more in the direction of your goals.
[00:27:16] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: This is how making a plan moves.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: You towards your goals. It's not the actual thing that you're doing in the moment. It's the learning how to stick to the plan, how to make adjustments, how to create better plans. It also starts to uncover why do you believe that you need to eat when you're hungry, right? And you can eat when you're hungry.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: If you like all the results that come from it.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Maybe you want to eat when you're hungry. Maybe you decide, though, you want to.
[00:27:43] Speaker A: Eat less than you used to.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Maybe you decide that you want to ride out that hunger because you want.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: To shift your brain's hunger signals or.
[00:27:51] Speaker B: Your body's hunger signals to earlier in the day. All of these things are options, but you have to kind of uncover what your brain is telling you is so urgent about hunger in the moment, and you can't do that if you don't.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: Have that plan to follow.
[00:28:05] Speaker B: If you don't have the plan that's coming from your prefrontal cortex to follow in the moment, your primitive brain takes over, and you don't ever realize you're hungry because you just eat the food.
[00:28:13] Speaker A: You just grab it and eat it.
[00:28:16] Speaker C: Okay?
[00:28:17] Speaker B: This is why making the plan is so helpful.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: The plan also makes it easy.
If you are busy and overwhelmed, feeling.
[00:28:26] Speaker B: Stressed in the middle of the afternoon, and your brain's like, what do I eat? I should eat. Eating would make it better. I love to eat. Eating is the best. It would make all of this go away.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: If your brain starts doing that, your job is to look at the plan.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: You don't have to decide any of those things.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: What does the plan say?
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Plan says, there is no food right now.
[00:28:45] Speaker A: That's not planned.
[00:28:46] Speaker B: I don't have to answer any of those questions. What causes fatigue and more stress in the evening and the afternoon? Many women say this, right, like, I just lose my marbles mid afternoon and I can't stick to the plan. The decision of I'm going to eat it. No, I'm not. Yes, I am. No, I'm not. Maybe this, maybe that, this back and.
[00:29:05] Speaker A: Forth of volley of making a decision.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Over and over and over again is.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: What leads to decision fatigue, and that's what breaks down the plan.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: If we're just following the plan, we're not making those decisions over and over again. We've got a plan here. This is what I'm following tomorrow. Maybe I put something on my plan for the afternoon, because I know this time has been really hard for me in the afternoon.
[00:29:31] Speaker A: That is how you work a plan. This is how planning our foods helps.
[00:29:37] Speaker B: Us to get to the goals that we want. This is how planning anything in life helps us get to the goals we want. We just make a plan and we stick to it. We adjust the plan, but we never.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Adjust it from the primitive brain because.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: That just reinforces a behavioral loop, right? Like a trigger a behavior and then a reinforcement. It just triggers that reinforcement, that behavior loop, that habit loop. And if you're not liking the habit.
[00:30:03] Speaker A: You'Re going to have to break that loop.
[00:30:05] Speaker B: You can't do that from your primitive brain. You have to do that from the prefrontal cortex. Making a plan keeps your prefrontal cortex.
[00:30:12] Speaker A: Online to help you move towards the goals that you want.
[00:30:16] Speaker B: That is how I recommend using planning, and that is why it's so helpful.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: I hope you found this helpful again.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Stay tuned for the webinar that will be in the end of the month. It's the last Wednesday of October, right before Halloween, October 25, I think is what it is. We will be having that web, webinar, now that I think about it, maybe that Friday. But stay tuned to Instagram. Stay tuned to Facebook. Email me Delane at Delaney, Md. If you want to know when it's going to be held, we will have that webinar. It will talk about planning, just what we talked about here, similar, and then also emotional eating. And if there's time, at the end of that hour long webinar, we will do some coaching. So if you're interested in that, make.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: Sure you show up to it.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: I hope this was helpful.
[00:30:58] Speaker B: I will talk.
