Victoria Kleinsman (00:00.835)
Hello loves. Another, this is a random episode actually, because I had no idea I was going to record this right now. However, I was lying in bed last night and thought of something I wanted to share. So if this turns out to be more than 10, 15 minutes or around 10, 15 minutes, I will put this as a podcast instead of a reel. So I was lying in bed last night and it was so hot.

I mean, very, very grateful we have air conditioning in our bedroom. We had it installed a few weeks ago and it’s just me and my daughter, Koa, in our bedroom because my husband sleeps somewhere else in the house, by the way, but he’s not down with waking up three times a night still and I’m breastfeeding. So it’s just me and Koa. And the reason I didn’t have the aircon on was because I didn’t want Koa to get a bit cold because she was practically naked, just with her nappy on.

Anyway, that’s the cool story, bro. The reason I’m sharing this episode is because I didn’t have the covers over me, the duvet over me, because I was too hot. Whereas in the past, in eating disorder, when I was like drenched in shame, especially around how my body looked, I would have to have covers over me no matter what, even if no one was literally in the room apart from me. It would just be such an ingrained habit.

that was created through safety, I felt like it was safe for me to be covered all the time. And then last night, I didn’t have the covers over me and I didn’t feel any need to. Bear with me, I’m going somewhere with this. I also used to have a habit of having a cushion or a pillow, whatever you want to call it, in front of me every time I sat anywhere. So if I sat on a sofa or a chair,

I would have to have a cushion or a pillow, like I would take it and put it on my lap in front of me. And that was because it felt safer to me in the past because I wanted to hide myself, hide my body. It was like a bit of security, a bit of safety for me. I know that’s quite a common thing to do with the cushion, with the pillow. And so this, I think I’m going to title this podcast, or real, whatever it is, something to do about habits because I get a lot of clients ask me, they’re concerned.

Victoria Kleinsman (02:26.828)
and worried about eating, binge eating, emotional eating, whatever, it turning into a habit that they can’t then change. But here’s the thing, this is all Victoria’s opinions. Here’s the thing about habits. Yes, habits are created by the unconscious mind in order to support us because, for example, brushing your teeth. When you first learn how to brush your teeth, you have to pay attention.

same with learning to drive, you have to pay attention consciously. But then the more times you do it over and over again, your brain creates pathways. So they say, let me get the quote correct, they say, neurons that fire together, wire together. So when you’re learning how to brush your teeth or learning how to drive or whatever it is you’re learning how to do for the first time, you have to pay full attention.

and the neurons are firing together, they’re creating new pathways of neurons in your brain. And so the more times you do that, the brain’s very smart and so it’s like, oh, well we’ll just make this unconscious, we’ll just make this into a habit because therefore it will be easier because she keeps doing it over and over again so we may as well just make it unconscious almost for her. And that’s how habits are formed if you do things over and over again, the same thing over and over again.

with repetition and consistency, a habit is formed and therefore the brain is wired that way. It takes no effort. It’s so easy for the brain to do what it’s been trained to do. And you’re the trainer of your brain, by the way. I’m pushing a pusher up a little hill. There’s no hills in the Netherlands, but there’s a tiny one now. That didn’t make sense either what I said, but in general, the land is very, very flat.

So back to habits and how your brain’s wired. So habits actually help you, otherwise, hello, otherwise you’d have no mental capacity to be doing all the things you’re doing if everything was a conscious effort all the time. So with habits, like for example, my previous habit of always having a cushion or a pillow in front of me when I sat down, or always having to have the blankets over me even if I was hot because

Victoria Kleinsman (04:48.898)
I just had so much shame it just felt safer for me to do that. The same goes with people afraid that eating will become a habit. Let’s say they have chocolate every night in recovery or dessert every time they’ve eaten something savoury and they’re worried it’s going to be a habit. Here’s the thing about habits, right? If the root cause of the reason for the habit is eradicated.

There’s always a reason why we create a habit. For example, I created the habit of having a cushion in front of me every time I sat down because I felt safer. I needed to protect myself and hide my body. Now that root cause is eradicated, now that root cause is healed, is a better word, I no longer feel the need to have the cushion in front of me. Now, because it was a habit, I would reach for the cushion out of habit because that’s what I always did ever since I can even remember.

when I sat down. However, because it’s no longer needed to protect me, it’s therefore then so easy to just choose not to continue with that habit and therefore change the habit and create a new habit. This is with anything. So with the blankets last night, the duvet last night, it was a habit. I felt myself go to reach them even though I was hot. But then I was like…

No, I don’t need to have them over me. I don’t need to protect myself from my own body or cover it anymore. So I’m just going to choose not to do it. And so when we don’t need the habit on some level anymore, it’s really easy to change it. The same with food. I mean, if you have a quote unquote habit of having dessert after every time you’ve eaten something savory, first of all, why is that habit bad or wrong? Why do you want to change the habit?

Do you need to change the habit if for some reason you want to change the habit because you genuinely don’t want the dessert and you’re just having it from habit? If it’s from that energy of genuine not needing it and it’s not from fear of weight gain or anything else like that, you can just easily choose not to do it anymore. But it has to come from a place of abundance and allowance and therefore choice is created. So when

Victoria Kleinsman (07:13.238)
someone comes to me with binge eating. When we heal the root cause of the binge eating, the binge eating stops by itself. And then any habits around food can just simply be changed by choice. And I want to reiterate the allowance creates space for choice. It always has to come from allowance and freedom, not from restriction and shame or judgment or anything like that. you’ll hear my little girl in the background. She’s in the pushchair today. She prefers to be on me.

on the baby carrier but it’s so freaking hot already. So that’s what I wanted to say about habits. just to wrap this up, this might probably is going to be a short podcast episode. If you have any questions about this, let me know and I can do like a part two. But all in all, I believe any habits that we have that we don’t want to have, if it’s not easy to change those habits, we need to heal the root cause.

of why the habit was created in the first place. When that’s healed, it’s so easy to change a habit. It’s just training your brain with repetition and consistency. And you’re the trainer of your brain, remember. You are not your brain. You have a brain, you are not your brain. So therefore habits become easy to change. Yeah, it takes effort, but you won’t keep falling back into the habit. You will only keep falling back into the habit if you still need the habit anyway.

I’m gonna speak to my little girl now. All right, much love. So I actually put a story, a question box on my story. I thought, well, I’ve done a little episode on my take on habits. So I thought, well, I’ll open up a question box for anyone who wants to ask me any questions around habits in eating disorder, recovery and beyond. So the first question I have is saying,

what’s my take on the difference between routines and habits? And I’ve just thought about this before I hit record. And I was gonna say that a habit is unconscious and a routine is conscious. But actually I want to challenge the fact that nothing is truly unconscious. Well, okay, wait, backtrack a minute.

Victoria Kleinsman (09:35.682)
The way we’re triggered, if we are triggered, we then react instead of responding. That can be unconscious because something’s happening unconsciously. We’re making something mean something. Our nervous system’s remembering something and then therefore we have the experience of a reaction. Whereas a routine is like, a bit like structure. It’s something that you set up within your day, within your week, within your month, whatever it is, to support how you want to live your life or to help.

you to organize your life so your life is easier and flows better. So that’s how I would say, how I would describe a routine. So a routine is a bit of structure. It’s something you kind of do the same time each day and it just serves you, which is why you do it. It’s a routine. There’s no kind of negative.

Well, depends on how you look at it, right? You can make anything mean anything, but there’s no like negative charge to it. It’s just a routine that you do that serves you. A habit on the other hand, again, I don’t want to say it’s something that happens unconsciously because I want to challenge that. Especially when we’re doing something physically, like if you’re physically going for a 10K run every morning.

and you say it’s a habit from eating disorder, for example, it’s not like you don’t know that your legs are moving. Do you know what I mean? It’s not like you don’t, you’re not aware, there’s the key word, it’s not like you’re not aware that you’re getting up and you’re getting your running stuff on and you’re going out the door and then you’re running. It’s not like you’re not aware of it. You’re conscious of what’s happening. Now it might just be something you think you have to do.

because it’s part of your identity. But if we’re talking about habits now, a habit is something that you’ve done over and over again with repetition and consistency. Your brain makes it easy for you to do it. So if you imagine like you’re standing at an English field and you’ve got one path to the left, which has been created to walk through. So let’s say you’ve got a big cornfield and you’ve got a path to the left that’s quite obviously the one to walk down. That’s like your brain.

Victoria Kleinsman (11:58.798)
the synapses that are fired together and therefore then wired together with the habit you’ve created. say, what habit shall we say? Let’s say a habit of, this is something I spoke about the other day, going to the toilet for a wee every time before you eat no matter what. So let’s say your brain tells you to go for a pee.

every time before you eat because that’s what you’ve always done for however long. So it’s like the path well walked in your brain. It’s so much easier to take that path. Whereas when you want to create a new habit or stop doing an old habit that’s no longer serving you, it’s like walking through the cornfield with no path and you’re having to create a path all by yourself. And in order to create a path that is as easy to walk down as the one previously that you’ve created,

you have to keep walking down it again and again and again. And it’s not always easy to begin with. You have to keep walking on it to make the path more trodden to therefore then eventually the path on the left that you used to go down, for example, always going for a pee before you have anything to eat, that becomes overgrown. Corn starts to grow back. And if you keep walking down the path that you’ve created on the right, aka not going for a pee before you eat every time, then that is the new path to walk down. And that becomes a habit.

So I would say a habit is the way your brain is wired and it’s the easiest path to take. That’s how I would describe a habit actually. A routine is just a structure that you have in your day that can become habit, yes, but I just see it as an external behavioural action of a routine. Whereas a habit is more internal and a habit is the easiest thing for your brain to do.

But as I was saying before, we can’t change, in my opinion, habits easily and sustainably anyway, until we look at why we have that habit in the first place, get to the root of that, either make peace with that and just live with that habit and accept it and own the shit out of it, or heal the root and then change it. Second question is how, it’s not really a question of habits, kind of, so I’m gonna answer anyway.

Victoria Kleinsman (14:18.158)
How did I stop calorie counting and tracking all foods and it’s been a habit for years? Well, again, I actually worked on letting go of the reason or the feeling that I needed to weigh, measure, count everything that went past my lips. Because if you only try to change the behavior or the habits on the surface, AKA doing things,

tricking yourself, which is really hard to do because your brain’s very smart, to stop yourself from counting calories, it becomes a battle with your brain and your brain will usually win, especially if you’re battling against yourself. Instead of working on, it takes longer, which is what people don’t like, taking more time to be like, why am I counting calories all the time? Because I’m afraid of gaining weight. Why am I so afraid of gaining weight? Because of all these reasons.

Are those reasons true or do they just feel true? Where did I learn that fear from? Like, unconditioning yourself, healing the trauma and the shame around, perhaps for you it’s not feeling loved or accepted or being judged. Like, until you heal those things, you therefore won’t be able to, long-term, be fully free and not calorie count because there’ll still be a little reason to do so. You know what I mean? Like,

I could access, if someone said to me, Victoria, what do you think the calories are in that meal of burger and chips? I could tell you a ballpark figure and be correct. I can access that information in my brain, but I don’t access that information unless someone would ask me outright, which they wouldn’t. And if they asked me outright, I would ask, why are you asking me outright before I’d give an answer? But what I’m saying here is it’s not like I’ve lost the knowledge from my brain.

What I’m saying truly and honestly is calories do not enter my mind in any way, shape or form when I’m choosing what I want to eat in any time, anywhere, any place. Because I no longer have the reason or the need to count and track calories because I completely trust my body, completely trust myself and also allow myself to actually have a pleasurable life and eat things just because I want to eat them. I’ve done the body acceptance work, my body is what it is.

Victoria Kleinsman (16:41.282)
And that’s true freedom. So therefore the behavior, the habit of counting calories just goes. And then someone said, how to stop exercising. I just can’t stop. And again, this is looking at why are you doing all this exercise? It’s based in fear. I absolutely guarantee you that. So what are you so afraid of? And the work on the fear, what are you so frightened of? If you were to stop exercising.

either altogether, which I recommend depending on your relationship with exercise and in recovery, what would happen or what do you think would happen if you stopped exercising altogether? Why would that not be okay? And then you work on the deeper stuff because yeah, I mean, can lock yourself, well, you can’t, but you could technically like chain yourself to the wall and just get fed by someone for like three months or something. And therefore maybe your addiction to exercise will have subsided because you couldn’t do the addiction and then you’re…

then your brain will be like, we have evidence that we didn’t exercise and actually we didn’t die or combust into flames. But obviously that’s not taking responsibility and choosing what you want and creating the life that you do want. So again, it’s eradicating the root cause as to why you feel like you need to do the exercise. And then let’s say you’re working on the root cause and you’re doing all the inner child work and the trauma work and the body image healing and returning back home to self-love and all the juice.

Then you would work on, okay, so my habit is to always get up at 5 a.m. and go to the gym. Is that actually a habit I want to continue if I were to live in my highest, best, freest self? Probably not. Maybe it would just be if I feel like it or maybe at a time after work or at the weekend, like whatever it is for you, like whatever feels most aligned for you. Then you would break the habit and therefore remember me talking about the cornfield analogy.

you would then have to create a new path for yourself, which would feel like hard work. And it wouldn’t be easy as you’re creating those new synapses in your brain. And then your brain is wired with the new pathway of not getting up at 5 a.m., actually sleeping in or reading instead or whatever it may be for you. And then that becomes easy. So your habits aren’t morally right or wrong.

Victoria Kleinsman (18:59.214)
Your habits don’t see themselves as like, this is a good habit or this is a bad habit. It’s just something your brain does when you do something with consistency and repetition. I hope that’s helpful for that one. Oh, this is a good one. Habitually asking my partner if he thinks my extreme hunger is binge eating or if it’s eating too much. This comes down to lack of self-trust and questioning and doubting yourself in your recovery because…

When you don’t doubt yourself, when you live in self-trust in terms of like your extreme hunger, recovery, your body’s gonna do what your body’s gonna do, you then won’t be outsourcing and needing reassurance. I mean, look, listen, we’re human. I had coaches to recover. I recommend getting support in some way to recover. We’re not supposed to do this alone. We actually heal through relationships to others. That’s how our trauma and…

Conditioning was created in the first place in relationship to others. So therefore, in my opinion, we can only heal in relationship to others, especially having a safe space and someone that’s been through it before. So if you’re habitually asking your partner, are you sure this is okay? Is it okay to this asking for their permission? It’s because something inside of you doesn’t feel like you’re doing the right thing for you. It’s second guessing yourself. So it’s not really, it is a habit.

But again, there’s a reason for this habit. The habit can then be stopped, changed, completely eradicated when you lean into self-trust, get to the root of why you’re questioning it, et cetera. How to stop binge purging after 25 years of doing so. Obviously that sounds like it’s a habit. And she said, it feels like fear, loss, panic.

Well, I want to start off by saying, of course you feel afraid in panic and like there’s going to be a loss if you were to heal from this binge purge behaviour after 25 years, because there will be a loss. In fact, any time you feel panic is actually one of the first stages of grief, the first signs of grief, which is panic, because you will be losing something. And what you will be losing is the reason for the binge purge behaviour.

Victoria Kleinsman (21:18.434)
to begin with, why it was created in the first place, you’ll be losing what it gives you because it will be giving you something which is why you keep doing it. If it wasn’t giving you anything, even if it was a habit, it would just be very easy to stop the habit, change the habit and move on. So first of all, get clear on what is this binge purge behavior giving you and then what is it costing you? And then when the cost is more than what it’s giving you, that’s when change can happen very quickly.

with a decision. So it’s speaking to the part of you that is frightened of leaving this behavior behind. Why is it not okay to leave behind the binge purge? A lot of this with professionals, sadly, when we talk about binge purge, a lot of professionals talk about you are not allowed to binge eat, therefore you won’t purge. Actually, the problem isn’t the binge eating, the problem is the purging. That creates a cycle.

So when you work with someone who understands that and actually helps you love the binges, and obviously bingeing is only a reaction to restriction of some kind anyway, it’s not about eradicating the binges, it’s about talking about the purging first. Get into the bottom of why you do that. I guarantee it’s not about the food, it’s the deeper emotional stuff underneath that. And then when you again get to the root cause of the purging and then stop restricting and then work out.

with someone who knows what they’re doing, like why it’s not okay to stop restricting and then face that fear together, then the habits of binge purging will be so easy to change with tools and tricks and strategies in place because you’ve got to the root cause. So as I wrap this episode up then, and any more questions around this, please let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them as and when I can. A habit is something your brain has.

created in the way that it’s wired together because of the way neurons have been fired. Neurons have been fired because you’ve done a behaviour or thought a thought with repetition and consistency over time. So the brain is like, I’ll make this into a habit because I’ll make it easy for her. Like I said, I don’t want to say it’s unconscious because I don’t fully believe anything is unconscious apart from when we’re triggered and then we have a reaction to something emotionally.

Victoria Kleinsman (23:39.33)
We do need a bit of digging to understand what was going on there. We’re not conscious of what’s going on there. But in terms of behavior, I don’t believe that behavior is fully unconscious because you’re aware of your body moving to the toilet, for example, if you’re gonna make yourself sick. And then a routine, this was like the first question, so I don’t know why I’m bringing this in, but a routine is just a structure. A habit is something that your brain creates to make your life easier and you can change your habits. You are not a slave to your habits.

but you need to get to the root cause of why the habit was created in the first place in order for you then to change them. And I always say swap, don’t stop. Unless it’s a very self-harming habit, then you’d get to the root cause, then you would stop that habit. But if you swap it instead of stopping it to begin with, it’s a lot easier to change your brain until you’ve got habits that you want to live by. All right, my love’s much love.

I’ll see you again on the next episode. As I’m speaking I noticed I’ve got a big hair on my chin, look at that.

Ha ha. I can’t get it, I’m gonna get tweezers right after this and grab the little fucker. well. Anyway, I digress. If you have any questions, I have a question form on my Instagram stories highlights. If you want your question answered every single month guaranteed, and I’ll speak personally to you, join my group coaching and you get me answering your questions directly within the private group and two coaching course a month.

access to all of my programmes, which will take you a year to go through, like not even joking, I poured my heart and soul into these programmes, and then direct access to me in there. If you want to look at what one-to-one coaching would look like, find my website. If you want to say hi, go on my website, fill in the contact form there. Much love to you, and I’ll see you on the next one.