The Urge Jar Trick: A Simple Way to Manage Cravings

I’m Dr. Deb Butler, and you are listening to Thinner Peace and Menopause. This is episode number 466.

Welcome to thinner Peace and Menopause and Beyond. This is Dr. Deb Butler, master life and weight coach, and as
always, your coach. If you’re a woman and you’re smart and you’re successful and you’ve been struggling with
weight your whole life, and now menopause causes making it harder than ever, and you are ready to make this the
last time you ever have to go on a diet again, then this.

Podcast is for you.

Stay tuned.

Well, hello all my dear friends all over the world. For those of you who are watching me on YouTube and for those of
you who are listening to me on any of your favorite podcast platforms, welcome. And today I want to talk to you and
teach you something very interesting about the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger. And a
little bit more about urges and a little exercise or game that you can play to tease your mind or give your mind
something to do when it thinks about how good something looks and how much it thinks you should eat it. So frst,
when we talk about physical hunger, as I’ve been talking about in the last few episodes, my physical hunger scale
goes from a negative 10 to a plus 10. Negative 10 is starving, plus 10 is stuffed.

I’m encouraging you to eat between the twos. Start at a negative 2 and stop at a plus 2. I’ve been talking about that
for a while. If you’re just listening to this, just listen to the maybe last two or three episodes about my physical
hunger scale. Or just go back to the beginning if you can believe, 466 episodes and start at number one, where I
teach the physical hunger scale in depth.

But for now, you are connecting to.

Your body, especially if you’re in menopause, especially if you’ve been on diets your whole life and you have no idea
how hungry or full you are, then frst you connect to your body.

Am I hungry? Negative two, am I full?

Plus two. And it’s the whisper of hunger and the whisper of fullness.

And then when we talk about why do you eat when you’re not hungry?

Which is probably the best question that.

Anyone ever asked me when I was in menopause and I decided not to.

Go back to Weight Watchers for the.

Hundredth time, to lose the same 20.

Or 30 pounds because it was just way too hard. I needed something else. And when a coach asked me, why.

Do you eat when you’re not hungry?

It Opened up all the doors for me to explore my own brain, which is what I teach now, and how I created this thinner
peace process of how to be at peace with your.

Body and food, especially if you’re in menopause and be able to get on.

The scale and weigh what you want.

And stay the same. So it starts with eating between the twos.

Do you know when you’re hungry? And do you know when you’re full?

Now, if you’re full and you know you’re at a plus two, but you want to keep eating, and you do keep eating. We’re not
talking anymore about eating because you’re hungry. Now you’re eating for another reason, or at least it’s not
physical hunger. And this is where we get into the emotional hunger scale of why do you eat when you’re not hungry?
And this emotional hunger scale goes from a negative 10 to a plus 10. Just like the physical hunger scale, only
negative 10 are the most negative emotions. Depression, anger at its strongest. And +10 is the best positive
emotions. Joy, love, all of those positive emotions. Plus 10 is the strongest, but you could feel them at a plus two,
much lighter. It’s the same with anger.

Minus 10 is you’re so angry you could hit somebody, but you probably wouldn’t, but you feel like it. And a minus two
is you feel angry, but it’s not very strong. And learning how to measure those is part of my therapeutice process. So
you know how hungry you are physically, but you also know how hungry you are emotionally emotional hunger
versus physical hunger. Now, those of you who want to lose weight, including myself, for 30 years, I had a lot of
emotional hunger going on. Sometimes I confused it with physical hunger. Sometimes I knew I wasn’t hungry and it
didn’t matter. So once you know you’re in emotional hunger and you know how to measure how strong it is, are you
really angry?

Are you just a little angry? Are you Sad, grieving, sad? – 8, negative 9, negative 10. Or you’re just a little sad, like a
negative 2. And I call it emotional hunger because those are like holes in your body, just like physical hunger are
holes in your body. But those holes, those physical hunger holes, need to be flled with food. But emotional hunger
holes do not need to be flled with food ever. That’s what most of you are used to doing, is flling your emotional
hunger holes with food. And when I talk about emotional hunger, I’m also talking about another term called urges,
which is part of emotional hunger. It’s just like the same thing as Anger or sadness. It’s an urge. Urge is a negative
emotional hunger, and it’s like a hole in your body. And it’s your brain giving you messages either.

This is so delicious. It’s right there. I should eat it. I’m so sad. I need to fll it. It could be all kind of thoughts in your
head, but those thoughts are creating urges. And urges can go from a 0.

To a negative 10.

Negative 10 is the strongest urge, where you could eat a piano if it would ft in your mouth. But it’s so strong. That’s
how it feels. And I’ve talked about this before, but I thought I could give you a little game to play with your brain. Now,
our brains love things to do, and our brains love pleasure and love fulfllment. And part of the thing with an urge is
that when you have an urge and you think something tastes delicious, you want to eat it to fll that emotional hole or
what we call an urge. Now, the way that you handle urges, which is part of my centerpiece process, just like any
emotion is, you need to learn how to feel it and not fll it. So urges is like an urgent desire. It feels like you need to do
something.

It feels like you need to eat something. That’s what an urge or a craving is like. It’s like you have to do it. And
depending on how strong it is, negative 10, you’re going to do it. And a negative one is. It’s pretty light. You might not
even know it’s there. But the way I teach is I want you to recognize all of these strengths, because when it’s a weaker
strength or a weaker urge, it’s a much easier emotion to handle and to feel it without feeling it, as opposed to a
stronger one. So once you understand and can feel an urge, this is how I kind of teach how to handle urges. So frst
of all, for instance, there’s a brownie, and I want it. So I might see a brownie, or I might be object of my desire is a
brownie.

I might think, I love brownies.

And that thought will create a feeling.

Inside of my body called an urge.

Now, how much I want that brownie will be dependent on how strong that urge is. I want it really bad. Negative
energy. Eight, seven.

I want it.

I see it.

Yeah.

Like that might be more like a negative 2. Now, the negative 2 or the negative 3 urge will be much easier to manage
than a negative 8. So I always encourage you to notice those weaker urges and feel them. And then once you feel
them, I teach you how to manage them. So you have a thought that just says, I love brownies. And the thought, I love
brownies, creates an urge. And when you feel the urge and it’s not real strong, like, let’s just say it’s a negative two or
a negative three, you might be able to manage it with. Just because I like brownies doesn’t mean I have to eat them.
Or I could have it later, or I can enjoy it later, or I could plan to eat it later. You can manage it.

You can manage the feeling and not eat it. Now, here’s the game. Once you understand the thought that creates the
urge and the thought that manages the urge, and you can manage the urges without putting the food in your mouth,
then we have a game. So here’s how the game goes. You can have a jar. I call this, it’s like a glass jar.

And what I want you to do.

Is when you feel an urge or.

When you think a thought that creates an urge, let’s just say it’s a cookie. And your brain says, that looks delicious.

That’s the thought that creates the urge. Now, it’s not the cookie that’s creating the urge, it’s your little brain thinking
that thought about the cookie, about how delicious it looks, that makes your mouth water. Now, maybe that thought
that creates the urge is like a negative 4. It’s a little strong, not too bad, but you can feel it. You know you’re thinking
it. And then you manage the thought by saying to yourself, just because it’s delicious doesn’t mean I need to eat it.

Now, that’s called managing the thought. And if you don’t eat it, you have thought it, you have felt it, you have
managed it, and you move on. Now, the jar, this is called an urge jar.

And the way the urge jar works is you’re going to fll it up with. With little crystals, little rocks. I have them, like right
here, and I love them. I have them still from Christmas, but I have them in green and red, and I think they’re kind of
pretty, and my brain kind of likes it. So, for instance, with the cookie, I think about a cookie. I think to myself, ooh,
cookies are delicious. I feel the urge. That’s an urge. And then I think, I don’t need it right now, or I’m not hungry right
now, or just because it’s delicious doesn’t mean I need to eat it. And I move on. If that’s what happens. You put a little
rock in the jar, in other words, good job, you get a Little reward. The goal is to fll the jar up.

Every time you think about something that creates an urge, it’s going to be the object of desire. For me, it might be
potato chips. I love potato chips. They’re so salty and crispy. Those are some of the thoughts that I’m going to think
that are going to create this urge for me to want to eat it. I know it’s an urge. I feel it in my body, and I say to myself,
it’s salty and it’s crispy, but I don’t need it. And I move on. I fll it up. The goal is to get as many rocks as you can in
here by managing the urges. And pretty soon, your brain gets very excited about wanting to fll the jar up. So your
goal is to fll the urge jar.

If you’re flling the urge jar, that means you’re not flling up your belly, and your brain is going, ooh, good job. So you
keep putting them in. You know, it might be fve days, six days, but pretty soon, this jar is going to be flled, and you’re
going to be very aware of these urges. You’re going to be very aware of the thoughts that create the urges, and your
brain is going to get very excited. Not about eating them, but about flling up the jar. And when flling up the jar and
saying all these pretty little rocks gets.

More fun to you than eating them, you’re also learning how to handle urges. You’re giving your brain something else
to do, and you’re teaching your brain how to manage these thoughts that create urges. And I think it’s a wonderful
magic.

Trick to the brain.

But what it does is it starts getting you the one that is in control of what you put in your mouth and what you don’t.

Because most of the women that I work with always say, I can’t control myself around cookies, potato chips,
whatever it is, once I start, I can’t stop. Those are all the things that they say. And what I teach when I’m in this
centerpiece process is that it’s not the food that’s doing it’s your brain and what it’s thinking and the feeling and the
vibration that it’s creating in your body, this craving or this urge, and that you’re just not feeling it, you’re flling it. So
you’re going to fll the jar instead of fll your belly. And I’ll tell you what, number one, the scale might refect it. Number
two, you might start getting pretty excited.

You do it for fve or Six days. And the next fve or six days will be easier, I promise you. You can do it with a jar this
size, or you can do it even smaller, or you can do it even bigger. But our brains love rewards and our brain is thinking.

The reward is the food. You’re training your brain that the reward is actually managing the thought. I want you to try
that. And also let me remind you that you can meet with me once a week on Jumpstart Wednesdays. If you’re
wanting to jumpstart some of these ideas, then every Wednesday at 1:00 Central. You can come join me. It’s kind of
like Facebook, but it’s more private. It’s on zoom. You can sign up by going to drdebbutler.com forward/jump.

You can sign up and you can meet me in two weeks since I’m not going to be here next week, but most Wednesdays
I will be. You can meet me, you can ask me questions, you can sit and you can listen, or you can even be coached.

It’s free. And it’s a private, safe platform that I created. A better way for us to meet each other than just listening to
me or watching me on a video. It’s the next best step to working with me. But it’s free. So, two things. One, now you
know a little bit about urges and emotional hunger. And you know that you want to feel your physical hunger and fll
it with food and work between the twos. And now you know that emotional hunger are also holes that need to be felt
and not flled with food.

And now you have your urge jar, which you can use that you will fll with these beautiful little rocks to give your brain
the reward that it’s looking for that won’t hurt you or your waistline or your health. So, of course, I would never end
this podcast without saying, no matter where you go or what you do or even who you’re with, please, please be very
kind to yourself and I’ll see you next week. Bye.

Bye.

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