What is the difference between journaling and thought work for eating behavior?

Journaling and thought work are two different tools that serve different purposes in behavior change.

Journaling is an awareness practice. When you journal, you write down your thoughts, feelings, and story about a circumstance as you experience it. Research links journaling to improved mental and emotional health through its connection to mindfulness and emotional processing. It accesses the surface layer of thinking, what cognitive behavioral coaching calls automated thoughts.

Thought work is more structured and goes deeper. In cognitive behavioral coaching, thinking operates at three levels: automated thoughts, underlying assumptions and rules, and core beliefs. Journaling can surface the first level. Thought work is specifically designed to reach all three, including the core belief level where socialization, diet culture, and body shame are embedded.

For eating behavior that is rooted in body image, behavior change requires working at the core belief level. That is why cognitive behavioral coaching is considered the gold standard for body image work, and why the clinical case for using it with eating behavior is equally strong. Journaling is a powerful starting point for clients who are building self-awareness. Thought work is the framework for lasting change.

Both have a role. They are not interchangeable.

Transcript 

[00:00:01] Welcome to It’s Beyond the Food Podcast, my sisters. I’m your host, Stephanie Dodier, non-diet nutritionist, cognitive behavior coach, and founder of the Non Diet Coaching Certification.

[00:00:30] And today we have a Coach Corner episode where I’m answering a question that actually directly came from one of my clients inside of Groundwork.

[00:01:00] And I think it’s gonna be helpful to a lot of you. This particular client had been listening to my podcast intensely since she joined Groundwork and she noticed something. She kept hearing me talk about thought work and cognitive behavior coaching, and she was wondering if it’s the same thing. Is it the same thing when I journal, as when I do thought work?

And is there one that’s better than the other? It is such a good question because I heard this question over the years, many times, and I think there’s a confusion between the two, which leads some people to think they’re doing thought work, where actually what they’re doing is journaling. So let’s answer that question today.

[00:01:45] Now, before we go into that, I wanna make sure that you know about the Coach Corner Vault. It is a free library with all the coaching questions that I recorded a quick training on. I’m not pretending that this is everything you need, but I think it is a good base for you to start learning how to coach the weight neutral health and behavior change using thought work and cognitive behavior coaching. So you can find it at stephaniedodier.com/coachcorner, or in the show notes with this podcast episode.

[00:02:15] Ready? Let’s dive in. Is journaling the same as thought work and which one is better? I love this question because it’s gonna allow me to talk about what is each — 101 — what is journaling? What is thought work? What is cognitive behavior coaching? We’re also gonna tackle cognitive behavior therapy, and we’re gonna talk about evidence that supports all of these modalities.

[00:03:00] So what is journaling? Let’s start there.

Journaling is not the same thing first as keeping a diary. Okay? A diary is a record of events. What happened today? Where did you go? What did you do, who you talked to? Many people do that in a bullet format. It’s kind of keeping track of how you lived your life. Where journaling is much more involving.

[00:03:30] It’s a deeply personal practice of writing down how you experience a specific circumstance. Many people will give an analogy to journaling as writing down a story, the story of your life. So you write down your thoughts, how you felt, how you experienced the circumstance.

[00:04:00] Another way to think about this is how you tell the story about you and your life. How you observe an event, how it made you feel, how you reacted, what you think of it. That’s journaling.

[00:04:30] Now there’s actually a fair amount of research and very light evidence on journaling. And I use the word light because when you start deep diving into the research around journaling, you’ll find small research, a lot of survey-based research, panels of like two to three hundred. So there is evidence and the results are clear, but it’s a very small base of research.

[00:05:00] Although the evidence may not be rock solid, it consistently shows an improvement in mental and emotional health. And the theory behind it is it allows people to be more mindful. The act of sitting down and writing down your story is allowing you to process what happened to you. And we know that processing and being aware are the first two steps of healing anything.

Like we can’t change, heal, transform anything we’re not aware of and anything we’re not willing to process. And that’s where journaling comes in. Journaling allows you to become aware, to take the time to be mindful and also to process your emotions.

[00:05:45] And the limited research has showed improvement in mental and emotional wellbeing and also physical wellbeing with improved sleep patterns and reduction of blood pressure. And it makes sense when you think about it, right? Because you’re starting the journey of processing what happened to you.

[00:06:00] And often if we wanna think about cognitive behavior therapy — like more of an individual relationship-based work with another human being — that’s one of the most significant portions of therapy: sitting down with someone and processing what has happened to you. And that’s what journaling allows people to do.

[00:06:30] Not to be confused with thought work. Thought work is different. Thought work is more structured, much more organized, much more intentional, and yes, it goes deeper.

[00:07:00] Thought work is a very deliberate practice of identifying the thoughts you think about a circumstance, questioning these thoughts intentionally, and also identifying how these thoughts make you feel. So you are able to put a link between: when I think this, I feel this way.

So it’s much more than just awareness. It’s much more than I feel stressed. It’s about using the framework to say: when I think this, I feel stress in my body. And then when I feel stress in my body, I behave — react or respond — I have the behavior of, for example, taking my phone, doom scrolling. That’s a behavior.

[00:07:45] When I think my body is ugly, I feel stress, and I pick up my phone and I start doom scrolling. So it’s a very organized way of looking at how you behave through becoming aware of what’s happening in your body at the feeling level and the thought that ignites that feeling.

[00:08:00] Now another point about thought work. Thought work is a structural framework that you can use on your own. Just like journaling. Journaling is about processing, becoming aware of what happened to you through doing it on your own, independently, using your journal and writing. Thought work is the same thing. Grab your journal, use the framework, and then you can start unpacking circumstance, thoughts, feelings, actions, and results in your life.

[00:08:30] Thought work can also be done in a structured coaching relationship with a coach, and that’s called cognitive behavior coaching, where we use the structure of thought work in coaching.

[00:09:00] Now I want to go there first — cognitive behavior therapy is a licensed framework practiced by licensed professionals that use the same model. Circumstance, thoughts, feeling, action, and result. But in a framework that will allow you to go into past events, unpack things that have happened to you in the past, make sense of them, become aware of what they created in your life, and in some cases bring resolution to them.

A lot of CBT is used for post-traumatic healing in all the various traumas you can have. CBT is proven to be very effective for that, but that’s done in a very structured approach with a licensed practitioner.

[00:10:00] Where cognitive behavior coaching is a coaching modality. And the difference between therapy and coaching is that coaching stays in the present moment and looks at the future. That’s what coaching is. Coaching is about helping people achieve their goals, which means you stay within the present behavioral pattern and you help people create a new behavioral pattern to achieve their goal.

[00:10:30] So in order for people to change their behavioral pattern sustainably, permanently, ongoing for the rest of their life — not just like a quick fix bandaid — we need to look at the thoughts at multiple levels.

[00:11:00] And that’s again what thought work allows you to do versus journaling. Thought work will look at the three levels of thoughts. The first one being your automated thoughts. These are the very fast, surface level, observation thoughts that your brain generates automatically. And it’s what usually comes up in journaling — those automated thoughts that you’ve been thinking about for a long time, that’s the perspective you have on a particular circumstance.

[00:11:45] The second level of thoughts is usually not present in journaling — specifically with people who are not aware of cognitive behavior coaching or thought work. People tend to stay at level one of thought awareness in journaling.

[00:12:00] Level two is when we have the assumptions and the rules. These are the automated thoughts that create assumptions. The kind of if-then rule. For example, in our particular niche: if I am in a larger body, I am therefore lazy. Or if I eat sugar, I will have diabetes. These are the rules that people tend to have, the unconscious thinking patterns that drive a lot of behavior.

In intuitive eating terms, that’s where mental restriction happens. But in order to see these if-and-then rules, these assumptions, people have to be at the next level of awareness, which typically comes through being coached and developing the understanding of the levels of thinking. And then people are able, with time, to see their own assumptions. But usually it’s revealed within a coaching relationship.

[00:13:00] And the third level of thoughts that become something we can explore with thought work is the belief — belief system, core belief. These are the longstanding, deeply embedded beliefs that people have. That’s where socialization is held.

So you hear me talk on this podcast constantly about socialization. It’s at that much deeper level. Think of an onion. It’s like the core of the onion. Journaling will allow you to peel the top layer of the onion. The assumptions and the rules will come second. And then that core, strong part of the onion is the core belief.

[00:13:45] And again, with time, practice, awareness, and skills, that becomes available — through either a self-driven practice of thought work or a coaching relationship practice of thought work.

[00:14:00] So to answer the question: which one is better for our particular niche — diet mindset, eating behavior, body image — none of them. There’s not one that’s better. I think they serve different purposes, and it’s also very individual based on where you or your client is at in their awareness.

And this is why it is so important to onboard your client, evaluate them, and understand where they are at in their journey.

[00:14:45] So for example, a client that has just come off of diet culture two weeks ago, deeply entrenched in counting calories and dieting, with no idea that diet culture existed — that’s probably a low level of self-awareness. Journaling will be very effective because they will start breaching that mindfulness and awareness level.

[00:15:00] So it would be a great place where you could give prompts, questions to ask themselves, that they can journal on. And just taking the time to sit down and journal will have huge benefit. Your client will see huge benefit from that. And then the more they do it, the deeper they will become aware and be able to go in their self discovery. And that’s when thought work comes in.

[00:15:30] Now, when you coach — that’s a whole different framework or question I want to answer. When you coach someone, when somebody pays you to help them change their behavior, I personally believe that thought work slash cognitive behavior coaching framework is the gold standard.

[00:16:00] We do know through research that the gold standard for body image, for therapeutic body image processing, is cognitive behavioral therapy. So if you’re a therapist, a licensed practitioner, you’ve been trained — that is the gold standard.

If you’re a coach, you can use the framework of cognitive behavior coaching, staying in the present moment and looking towards the future. Again, it’s the gold standard.

[00:16:30] And I will venture to say — although I have not seen any research on that — that cognitive behavior coaching is also the gold standard for eating behavior transformation that is attached to body image. Because the change in eating pattern and eating behavior that is rooted in control of the body, as you all know, is attached to body image. Therefore, there’s a lot to unpack for people at the three levels of thoughts in order to change their behavior in the future.

[00:17:30] So to me, if you are a professional, CBC, CBT — that is the golden standard to practice for us.

[00:18:00] So there you have it. That’s my opinion. Not one is better than the other. They have a different place in the healing, the recovery, the transformation of people’s behavior in relationship to their body.

[00:18:30] So if you are a health professional and this conversation is opening something for you, and you’re like, this would be really powerful for me and my clients — I’ll be adamant that embodiment is first. Meaning that you have to practice thought work in your own life in order for you to be able to facilitate it for people. Because otherwise it will be very inefficient, let’s just put it that way, and not very therapeutic for your client. You won’t just be repeating things that you learned in a course instead of actually being able to lead from your body to their body.

[00:19:00] So if you’re a health professional and that sparks something for you, the Non-Diet Coaching Certification is where a health professional learns this modality specifically around food and body image.

And if you’re someone who wants to learn that for themselves, that’s where Groundwork comes in.

I love you, my sisters, and I’ll see you on the next podcast episode.