This summer are you finding yourself feasting in the pantry or zoning out in front of the fridge searching for something sweet, creamy or crunchy to quench your boredom, anxiety, exhaustion, stress?
Today I want to shed LIGHT on emotional eating and how easily you can overcome it when emotions override and sneak in overcoming any willpower you had. To begin there are two important questions to ask yourself.
Keep reading …
1) Am I even hungry?
- Physical Hunger comes on gradually; Emotional Hunger comes on suddenly
2) What am I feeling?
- Satisfying Physical Hunger doesn’t make you feel bad about yourself; Satisfying Emotional Hunger triggers feelings of powerlessness, shame and guilt.
Likely your brain thinks you’re hungry when you’re actually really thirsty. Drink a glass of water before downing a whole bag of chips. Add watermelon chunks, cucumbers or fresh squeezed lemon juice to the water. Make it fun. While you are drink a full glass of water, ask yourself, “What am I feeling?”
If it’s loneliness, boredom, overwhelm, or tiredness, you need to dig deeper. That’s too vague. Maybe something happened with a friend or you had a misunderstanding with your partner or you got an unexpected bill in the mail. When you shed light on exactly what is driving your emotions, you can park the car, and choose a new route.
Take a 10 min time out. Just like you did with your kids. Sit quietly with that feeling. Do NOT busy yourself with TV, social media, cleaning, or any other busy bee task. That’s another distraction like food can be or strong desire to busy yourself so you can avoid your feelings!
Allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling in your body. Where do you feel the loneliness? Is it in your chest, belly, throat?
My tip to beat emotional eating is simple: Name It, Claim It, Change It
What that means is to Name the emotion. Most times when we feel crappy, we drown it out with chocolate or worse indulge in red wine and chocolate cake. Breathing deeply will help you stay in the moment and discover what’s coming up for you.
Let go of judging yourself. You’re human and whatever you are feeling is what you feel. Be honest. Allow yourself to feel it. Lean into the feeling to get to the other side. This usually isn’t fun work, and oftentimes, it isn’t pretty. It’s triggering you and you want it to stop, I get it but eating through it isn’t your answer. (I personally use tapping (EFT)-among other things- to help me and my clients move quickly through the uncomfortable feelings.)
Claim it by being aware of the emotion in the moment and take ownership of it. How can you shift this? By claiming it alone can shift it!
Changing it by moving through the emotion to the other side. If overwhelmed, overwhelm turns into ease.
If sad, sadness turn into joy
If lonely, loneliness turns into compassion
If frustrated, frustrated turns in to patience
Suggestions #1:
Do some journaling. Ok, don’t roll your eyes!
If you have to write a let-me-give-you-a-piece-of-my-mind letter to someone, go ahead. You don’t have to send it. The act of spilling your emotions on paper will feel good and more importantly let you express yourself in a safe way…releasing the energetic hold that it has on you and your body.
Suggestions #2:
EFT-Emotional Freedom Technique aka-Tapping has been a TRANSFORMATIONAL self-help tool for my private clients and myself! I can’t emphasize it enough on how important it could be for your ability to make impactful changes. Tapping is a technology which is to bring what is subconscious to conscious awareness.
Whatever you do, let go of the automatic action to stuff your feelings down with food. As they say, “where ever you are, there you are.” It’s best to become aware of the emotions you feel, so you can flip the script.
Schedule a Health Discovery Session to break away from the emotional eating hold that has you stuck!. Together we can talk about the many ways best for you to rise above emotional eating. I’ve been there and I can help.
To your freedom!
Amy
Recent Comments