Tag Archives: stop binge eating

The Realization that Stopped My Holiday Bingefests

Historically, when it comes to food on holidays, I completely lose my shit. Go off the rails. Eat my weight in potato chips. And gain quite a bit of weight that I end up attempting to work off all winter, sometimes longer. Even if I do well leading up to it, exercising and eating well, the day of the actual holiday comes and it starts at least a 5 day eating frenzy! Thanksgiving is no exception – my husband, brother and law and I spend the whole 4 days together reading, playing games, binge-watching The Walking Dead, enjoying cocktails and eating up all the leftovers.

Considering I make a lot of vegetables, this doesn’t have to be a big deal, but since there is also lots of pie, cheesecake and leftover appetizers and dips and things, it’s been ugly many times in the past. I can think of multiple occasions when I found myself sitting on the couch with a bowl of chips and dip after guests left, not even hungry, but desperately wanting that rich creamy deliciousness that I hadn’t had since the previous Thanksgiving. Sure, I ate some in front of guests, but I wanted to consume a large quantity of it, when I could enjoy it without the distraction of others.

I’d go to bed with a full and distended belly and wake up the next morning feeling physically terrible and emotionally fragile. I’d feel so defeated (by dip, it’s just dip!!!) that I’d eat breakfast and yet be counting down the hours until I could snack on whatever tasty item my mind was obsessed with in the fridge. And then I’d snack on that, and then something else, and something else, until by the end of the 4 day weekend I was sick, irritable and a good 8 lbs heavier. Getting myself back to normal eating after several days of this was always hard, especially with Christmas season following close behind.

The last couple of years I’ve been able to stop the ridiculousness before it began. What’s awesome about that is not only do I not physically feel sick for days at a time but I also get to enjoy the rest of the holiday season without feeling shitty about myself, which means I don’t do things (like binge eat) that will make me feel even shittier. It’s a wonderful feeling to not feel so compelled to bury myself in food . . .but my solution to this annual problem was surprisingly simple.

I came to the realization that I can eat these foods any time I want. I’m not just saying that. It’s the truth. If I want them, I can eat them. I have free will. I have the $$ to buy them. I have the time and energy to make them. We make food choices every day and a choice I could choose is to eat dip and chips and cake more often, if i want!

I don’t just have to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy Ina’s pan-fried onion dip or Karina’s flourless chocolate cake and the reason I found myself going nuts on them is because I completely bought into the belief that I shouldn’t have them, I thought they were too fattening or that they were “bad” for me. I believed they were so bad for me that they took on an emotional charge – and that charge pulled me to them like a magnet and steel.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s a good idea to eat cake and creamy dairy dips daily – but once a month, twice a month? That’s really not a big deal. Keeping these foods so off limits that they could only be enjoyed once or twice a year gave them a power over me that made eating them a charged experience.

Recognizing that I’m the only one putting a limit on these foods and that if I actually want to eat them I can, took the emotional charge away from them – which means I feel less out of control around them and frankly want them way less! I may eat them more frequently but I eat far less of them when I do.

When I do eat them now, they taste good and I enjoy them, but that compulsion to find a way to eat as much of it as I can is just a memory. Because, if I want to eat it again next week or next month, I very well can!

Let these ideas sink in:

  • Rich, decadent foods aren’t “bad” and you are not “bad” for enjoying them occasionally.
  • You can eat what you want, when you want to.
  • You actually may not even want the things you thought you did when they are always available to you.

Christmas, Hanukkah, New Years are coming. Lots of holiday parties, cookie swaps, cocktails with the girls – think of what foods or drink you romanticize or obsess over and answer these questions (in your head is ok but on paper is more effective).

  • What thoughts do you have around them?
  • Describe what you hope to get when you eat these foods. What feelings will they bring you (good or bad)?
  • How does eating them make you feel about yourself?
  • Do you have any restrictions around these foods (when, how, why you should enjoy them)?
  • What do you think would happen if you could let yourself eat these foods whenever you wanted?
  • If you did eat these foods whenever you wanted, how much do you think you would eat? How long before you get sick of these foods?
  • Are you willing to let go of some of the charge these foods hold for you?

I know this sounds overly simple, and it is. It’s just one of many steps you can take to have a more relaxed life with food. We think getting better requires some major complicated epiphany but really it’s just many different steps and thoughts, practiced over and over and over again, until eating in a more loving and kind way becomes your norm. Every week I come here and write about some aspect of emotional eating, dieting, binge eating or other related subject and sometimes it won’t speak to you, other times it will hit the nail on the head. Maybe, just maybe THIS idea is one that will speak to you.

And if it does, let’s do a call! The intro session is free.

Your Feelings Have a Message for You. Are you Listening?

Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When we overeat instead of feeling our feelings, we’re rudely silencing ourselves.  (Image courtesy of photostock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

Last week, I wrote about how one of the things you need to do if you want to stop eating emotionally is to get back into your body. This week I want to talk about another aspect of halting emotional eating. This time, it’s about listening to what the feelings we avoid feeling might be trying to tell us. We must make sure that we are being heard.

I can’t tell you how many times I reached for food as a way of comforting myself for feeling sad, lonely, lost, uninspired, demoralized, frustrated, stuck (insert any crappy feeling here). I can tell you that once I realized I was emotional eating that it didn’t make it easier to stop.

I can tell you that there were times I knew full well that the eating I was planning on doing was actually going to make me feel worse than I felt to begin with – yet I still shoved handful after handful into my mouth. Feeling physically terrible and emotionally bad about what I just did (eating those feelings!) somehow felt less bad than whatever vague discomfort or frustration I was feeling before. I thought I was eating to feel better yet feeling “better” actually meant making myself feel worse.

The remedy for my uncomfortable feelings was to make myself feel so bad that I forgot for a little while what I was feeling so bad about! And feeling so awful only confirmed for me whatever negative things I was thinking about myself (I’m out of control, I’m a failure, what is wrong with me?) so the urge to do it all over again was stronger the next time I felt bad.

When we use food as comfort or to numb out, we are really trying to find a way to distract us from whatever it is we don’t want to feel.

Why do we need to distract ourselves? Why is feeling unpleasant feelings so awful? Where do we get the idea that there are some feelings too unbearable to feel? What went wrong for so many of us that this is how we deal with bad/negative feelings?

Let’s pretend for a minute that instead of turning to food when we feel something that feels overwhelmingly bad to us, that we decide to just feel that feeling. We don’t try to push it away, avoid it, wall up against it or resist it. What is the worst thing that can happen from feeling that way? Nothing, aside from feeling something uncomfortable for awhile.

There is nothing all that bad about feeling a feeling. It will come over us in waves, sometimes getting stronger before all is said and done (but if you’ve ever been in the ocean, you probably know how to ride a wave back to the shoreline). It’s just a vibration in the body – just a sensation.  And all feelings pass.  Good feelings pass. Bad feelings pass. We can’t be happy every day, every moment for all of our lives and we certainly won’t have bad feelings every moment of our lives. So why do emotional eaters treat them as if we let them in for one second they’ll never leave? For some, it’s a legit fear of the feeling – they can’t bear to feel it. But for others, it’s more than that.

Part of the reason we avoid uncomfortable feelings is because sometimes those negative feelings have a message for us and we might not be ready to listen, because listening to them means we need to do something about it. The message is that something needs to change and only you know what that something might be.

The need to run away is because those feelings might be trying to communicate that there is something in our lives that we need to change. Maybe we’re unfulfilled by our current situation or our potential is being limited by a job, a relationship, our way of thinking, destructive habits or something else. Uncomfortable feelings are the harbingers of a problem we are concealing.

Sometimes making necessary changes is scary and overwhelming so since we aren’t ready to face it, we push the message away and send back a message of our own. The act of overeating to avoid feelings is a message we relay to ourselves that says:

  • “I don’t want to listen to what you have to say.”
  • “You’re not worth the effort.”
  • “No one cares.”
  • “Shut up.”
  • “Your needs aren’t important.”

By not dealing with our feelings and turning to food instead, we are conveying to an important part of ourselves that he or she isn’t worth being heard.

This brings up the question, if at our core WE are not willing to listen to ourselves, where else in our lives are we not being heard? Not expressing ourselves? Where else in our lives are we feeling silenced or silencing ourselves? Putting our needs last? Feeling ignored? Feeling stifled?

How can we expect to get anything we want or need in life or from those around us if we are not even willing to listen to ourselves?

If you aren’t willing to express your feelings to yourself, it’s very likely you aren’t expressing them in other parts of your life either.

When was the last time you asked for a raise at work? When was the last time you communicated to your partner your needs? When was the last time you sent back a meal at a restaurant that wasn’t how you wanted? Do you think of yourself as a “people pleaser”? If you see yourself in any of this, I’m sure you can add some of your own examples.

At the beginning of this blog post I said that once I realized I was emotional eating that it didn’t make it easier to stop. That’s true. But once I realized that I was silencing myself by ignoring my feelings with food it became harder to view my actions with the same harsh judgement. It opened up a door to kindness – which is essential to moving past it.

Think about this. You’re at a party where you don’t know many people. You finally see someone you do know but they’re in a group having a conversation. You walk over to the group and wait for an opportunity to say hello to your acquaintance and introduce yourself to the others. You make eye contact with your acquaintance and believe they recognize you. Finally there is a pause in the conversation so you start to speak – but as soon as you do, your acquaintance puts their hand up and talks over you. You wait for additional pauses so you can have your turn but the same thing happens again, and again, each time the person speaking talks louder to drown you out. You leave the party feeling invisible, awkward and like you weren’t heard at all.

It feels horrible to feel like we aren’t being heard.

In real life, we would feel so ashamed to treat someone else like the acquaintance treats us in the example, but we do it to ourselves all the time! We wouldn’t do it to another person, so why do we do it to ourselves?

I know many of you reading this will recognize yourself in this. Do you think you can treat yourself with a little more kindness? Be more open to messages you may be sending to yourself? What might your loneliness, sadness or frustration be trying to tell you?

When I finally started to listen to the message my feelings were trying to tell me, the message was that I deserved more, I wanted more and I was capable of so much more. The reason I didn’t want to hear that was because I wasn’t sure how to go about it. But guess what? It’s been much easier to figure that stuff out as I go than it was to keep stuffing it down and trying to avoid it.

For a moment, let’s go back to the part where we let ourselves feel whatever we’re feeling. Instead of reaching for food, we choose to let ourselves feel whatever it is we normally avoid. What happens if we survive feeling our feelings? (which we will). We get past the uncomfortable thing we don’t want to feel and end up on the other side.

If you actually let yourself feel the depth of what is bubbling up for you, you might just hear the message you need to hear. Maybe not all of it at first, but some of it. Maybe you’ll feel it deep enough that you are ready or inspired to do something about it. Even if you aren’t quite ready to do something about it, know that there is value even in just hearing yourself out and that the depth of your understanding and willingness to create change can increase the more often you practice these things. You’ll know you’ve made very real progress with feeling and listening when the urge to run from your feelings isn’t there anymore.

Don’t underestimate the power of feeling your feelings and allowing yourself to be heard. If you hear one message from this post today, make it this: stop silencing yourself with food.

Do you think there is a message you need to hear that you have been avoiding? What makes that message so difficult to hear? What do you think you need to do to feel more heard in your life?

Please share your thoughts in the comments. If you like what you’ve read here, please join my email list in the green box below so that you don’t miss out on what’s going on with Andrea and her coaching practice.

How to Put the Brakes on an Emotional Eating Spiral

Do social events that happen around food stress you out?

Do social events that happen around food stress you out?

Today I’d like to talk about something that I think doesn’t get talked about enough:  emotional eating.  I don’t know if it doesn’t get talked about much because people are unaware of how common it is or if it’s because there’s just so much shame around our eating habits on the whole. Maybe you are someone who has never turned to food for an emotional reason, if that’s the case, good for you! But there’s a whole lot of people who struggle with it regularly.

I think a huge part of the obesity epidemic our nation is facing is caused in part by how poorly we deal with our emotions. Instead of turning to a friend to talk to or going for a walk, we stuff those uncomfortable feelings down with food (ice cream? chips? what’s your poison?).  But like a suitcase that’s been overstuffed on each successive trip, eventually the seams are going to give and your dirty laundry is going to be all over the conveyor belt.  Good luck getting your belongings back in a suitcase that has fallen apart.  In other words, you can only ignore feelings for so long before they will demand that they be dealt with.  Shit doesn’t fix itself as much as we hope and pray it will.  It’s much wiser to deal with things before they get out of control.

If this is you, let me start off by telling you that you are not alone.  Look around at the women in your life – I guarantee you that at least one of the women you love also struggles with their relationship with food.  It might be someone who is overweight or it might be someone who is not. It might be someone you don’t even suspect. For years, I convinced myself (and others) that I was overweight because “of my stocky Irish genes” or because “I just eat too much healthy food”.  I don’t doubt that family history has something to do with my size but pretty early on I learned to reach for food when something didn’t feel right to the point where I remember laying in bed as a kid and saying my nightly prayers and praying to the virgin Mary (I figured as a woman she’d understand my plight more than God or Jesus) to help me lose weight. I specifically remember praying that for every calorie I ate, I would lose two.  So grateful she didn’t answer that prayer, I didn’t think that one through mathematically!  But how sad that a little kid, who, looking back wasn’t even that overweight (yet) already knew about calories and that being heavy was a bad thing.

Food was always the fastest way for me to feel joy.

Food was always the fastest way for me to feel joy. Strangely enough, I look back at these pictures of me as a kid and don’t even see myself as overweight or fat.

Praying for weight loss was just the start of it. Bad day at school? Hand in the cookie jar, repeatedly. Lonely night at home? Let’s eat a whole sleeve of crackers and a block of cheddar cheese. I developed a self-deprecating sense of humor where I knocked myself for my size before anyone else could.  I had to make sure everyone around me knew that I knew I was fat, lest they think I was in the dark about it. It hurt less to make fun of myself than it would for others to make fun of me. My issues with food and uncomfortableness with my size got so bad at times that I remember joking about how I wished I was bulimic when I was in college.  Sure, I had the bingeing thing down pat, I just didn’t purge, at least not successfully.  I know there were a few occasions when I tried. Thankfully I failed and it didn’t continue.  No matter what phase my eating issues were in (and there have been many many over the years), two things were consistent: I loved to give the idea that I didn’t eat that much, by ordering a salad when going out to eat with other people or claiming that I ate already so that other people didn’t see how much I really ate.  And the other thing was that I constantly was distraught about my size and my confidence was shot. I may have acted confident on the outside (I was often the life of the party!) but inside I was screaming.  I hated myself for being fat.  I felt like that was all I was and that was all anyone could see of me and so to deal with the shame I felt around it, for many years I just ate more.  At the time, that seemed the only option.

I got tired of falling back into the same self-destructive patterns every time life wasn’t working out the way I wanted it to so I’ve worked really hard at incorporating the strategies below into my life. I’m in a much better place these days (the stories above are decades old) and I’ve tried every possible route for having a healthy relationship with food.  I finally feel like I’m in a place where I can enjoy food without it taking over my life. Sure, occasionally I still struggle with periods of using food to deal with an emotion (because I’m human and have faults) but it’s infrequent and when it does happen, it’s on a minor scale.  I’ll take a minor trip up over what I was doing before, any day!

Below are some seriously powerful tips for halting an emotional eating spiral.  Many of these won’t be a surprise – I’m sure you’ve heard some of them before but these are the things that have helped me break my decades old habits that were impacting my health, my mood and my life and they’ve become invaluable to me. I hope a few of them can help you do the same.

How to Put the Brakes on Emotional Eating:

1. Figure out what your trigger foods are and stop eating them (at least for a little while).  Don’t buy them for yourself and don’t buy them for someone else in your household.

This is not a popular thing to suggest. One one hand, emotional eaters and chronic dieters need less rules about eating – not more – but if you really lose all control when you eat certain foods . . .and can’t enjoy the food without feeling both physically and emotionally awful, why do we want to tell people they can keep it in their lives? I recommend at least taking trigger foods out of your diet for a little while (you may be able to return to them in some form down the road!). Sometimes we are surprised by how much we enjoy not eating these foods once we’re not clouded by them anymore.

I know this is probably the hardest thing to do (and that is why I’m starting with it). If you are willing to walk away from your triggers, you will be well supported by the other tips below. If you’re not, well, you might not be ready to change your ways.  If you have fears around not eating your trigger foods, how do you think they are serving you?  What are you getting from that particular food that you can’t get elsewhere?

We think that we can keep the food in the house but just not eat it.  It doesn’t work that way for most of us.  If it’s truly a trigger food for you, you will eventually eat it and start the cycle over again.  If your trigger is soda or ice cream and you feel like you can’t not have it in the house because it’s not fair to your kids – that’s total BS.  Your kids don’t need ice cream and they don’t need soda. There are plenty of other foods to enjoy that don’t need to set you up for self-sabotage.  I don’t care what the food is – there is another option.  If it’s milk and you’re worried about calcium? Load up on beans and greens.  You’ll be fine.  They’ll be fine.

My triggers are primarily cheese and wheat! Whenever I binged in the past, it was usually on something like cheese and crackers, doritos, or white cheddar cheez-its.  But over time, I also realized that anytime I had a lot of bread, cheese or pasta, I usually found myself over eating the next day (or sometimes for several days) so now I’m about 90% dairy free and completely wheat free except for the odd occasion.  The times I give in and have a piece of bread or some cheese? I notice it in my mood and my cravings the next few days and have to work really hard to keep myself from sabotaging all the hard work I’ve done.  It’s a lot less work for me to just not eat them in the first place and I know it’s hard to believe but I sincerely don’t miss them and I don’t feel deprived.  At all! I’ll tell you how and why in another post but it has a lot to do with #4 on this list. (I should also mention that I’ve since noticed certain health issues have been reduced since removing these foods from my life – my asthma, rosacea and constipation have been lessened!)

Some people can take a break from their triggering foods and return to them at a later date -these foods will have less of a hold on them over time. Others can’t and will need to not eat them going forward. Only you know if that is right for you!

2. Take a few deep breaths before eating to center yourself.  Take a minute to relax and slow down your mind and body before eating.

Be present when you eat. I know we’re all so busy and life is rushed today but if we eat at the same pace that we live our lives, we don’t get to “enjoy” our food and food is meant to be enjoyed! If you take a moment to check in with your body and your mind before you eat, you are more likely to enjoy the meal. And when you truly enjoy your food, you won’t feel deprived and that makes a massive difference in whether or not you’ll find yourself going overboard later.

3. Make eating the sole activity you do whenever you do it.  Do not read while eating.  Don’t watch TV.  Don’t go on your phone or laptop.  Don’t write your to do list. Don’t talk on the phone or drive. Focus on the meal in front of you.

Take it in with all of your senses. Does it look appetizing? How does it smell? Notice the textures in your mouth. Is the food crunchy or soft? Pretend you are studying it for an exam you will have later.  Notice the details.

Eating this way helps your brain receive signals that let it know when you’ve had enough to eat.  It also helps you produce adequate saliva which is an important part of digestion. If you are consumed by other activities while eating your body and brain don’t communicate as well leading your body to forget that it’s eaten and it will be begging for food all day (like my cat). I’m not kidding!

Have you ever been driving only to reach your destination and have no recollection of part of your drive because you were thinking deeply about something?  It’s very similar.  Your brain won’t have a memory of the meal if you distract it with other tasks.

This is also a tough rule to implement and follow.  You will have a lot of urges to just give in and go back to whatever old habits you had while eating.  I realize that sometimes we can’t help but eat on the go, but those times should be a last resort. You can make an effort the rest of the time.  You may find you have a lot of resistance towards changing these habits.  I totally get it! I used to zone out on my laptop while plowing my way through a box of white cheddar cheez-its.  Why?  Because I didn’t want to feel whatever I was feeling and being on the computer distracted me.  It also distracted me from tasting or noticing the food I was eating, which meant that despite feeling incredibly full and gross, my urges to eat would continue.  I never got full enjoyment of the food I was eating.  If you feel a lot of resistance to making meal time only about eating, then ask yourself why?  Why do you feel you need to do something else while eating?  Why is eating not enough?

4. Eat. Stop starving yourself.  Stop restricting.  Stop “dieting”.

I know it sounds counterintuitive if you are struggling with a bingeing or emotional eating issue to just allow yourself to eat but many people who find themselves bingeing out of control are restricting calories or strictly controlling how much they eat each day.  Our bodies like balance and they’re keeping track.  Geneen Roth has said “For every diet there is an equal or greater binge” and I’ve found that she’s completely right.  If you’re terrified of eating too much fat and spend your days eating fat free or low fat foods, when you do go over the rails, you can bet it will be on a substance that contains fat.  If you restrict the amount of calories you eat for a long time, the urge to eat everything in sight will eventually take over you and willpower will only take you so far.  You’ll end up eating far more than you would have if you just allowed yourself to eat food to begin with.

People who are naturally slender eat when they are hungry and they stop when they’ve had enough.  Some days they may eat a lot and other days not so much.  It all balances out. The fear of losing control and gaining weight goes away as you realize that your body is not out to betray you.  It’s on your side.  If you feed it appropriately and without judgement, it will reward you with energy, a stable mood and a waistband that doesn’t fluctuate massively.

All this being said, I think it’s important to focus on whole foods when trying to stop destructive eating patterns like this.  It would be irresponsible to just suggest that bingers eat more to reduce binges – there’s more to that. What you eat matters.  If you’re eating a lot of processed food, it’s time to try to reduce your dependence on them. Support your body by giving it high quality sources of fat, protein and carbohydrates so that you will feel satisfied, energized and sated.  Avoid foods that spike blood sugar (sugar, refined flour, most baked goods etc) and if you do eat them, pair with protein to reduce the effect.  I love pairing nourishing whole foods together, like sweet potatoes with coconut oil and hemp seeds, homemade chicken salad lettuce wraps or an avocado stuffed with black japonica rice, tomatoes and pumpkin seeds etc.

When you feed yourself fully, you feed your body and soul and you will feel and see the difference.

5. Figure out what you are feeling. What don’t you want to feel? What is too uncomfortable to acknowledge? What do you believe to be true about yourself?

Most emotional eating episodes are tied to the avoidance or suppression of a feeling or a form of punishment (due to a feeling). When you get the urge to go crazy on whatever food has your attention right now, ask yourself:  What am I feeling in this moment?  Are you sad, angry, frustrated, bored, lonely, ashamed?  Just ask, label it (I’m not a fan of labels generally but here it’s helpful) and sit with the feeling for 10 minutes, taking deep breaths. You don’t need to do anything with the feeling yet but just let it be.  After 10 minutes, is the urge to eat still there? It might be, but it also may be reduced.

This takes practice.  Often bingers say they don’t feel anything when they want to eat or are eating but that is usually because they’ve used the activity to teach themselves to feel numb. You can’t push feelings away for months or years and then expect they’ll make themselves known to you the first time you try to pay attention to them. Keep asking questions of yourself. It will take work, many conversations with yourself, maybe some journaling and talking with others. The more you acknowledge and encourage those feelings to be felt, the more you will be able to feel them and ultimately the less you’ll need to eat what you don’t want to feel.  Those feelings are coming from somewhere and they deserve to be felt, to be acknowledged.

Once you know what you are feeling and can let it join you for a bit, you take some of its power away because now you have an opportunity to deal with it. Is what you are feeling that is the issue? Or is it that you don’t know how to fix something, want to avoid something etc? Is there something you are avoiding (unhappiness in a job, a large project, a difficult conversation?) that is causing you stress? Is there a story you’ve been telling yourself about who you are that is holding you down? What can you do about it?  Can you call a friend who will listen to you? Put it all down on paper in a journal?  Go for a walk and think it over? Create a strategy to change the things that are stifling you from living the life you deserve? You know the answers already, you just need to ask the questions.

6. Forgive your slip ups, love yourself & let go of the need to be perfect. No one is perfect and you shouldn’t feel like you need to be either! 

Many women I talk to who have an issue with emotional eating, talk about how much worse they feel after a binge or emotional eating episode.  They beat themselves up.  They do and say hurtful things about themselves.  They believe they are bad people for not being able to control their eating. They feel disgusted with themselves.  They feel like everyone else around them must have it easier because they aren’t consumed with thinking about food.  They also talk about how feeling so badly about themselves makes it easier for a bad eating episode to happen.  If you are disgusted with yourself, eating a bunch of stuff that makes you feel even worse doesn’t seem like that big of a deal because the feelings (disgust, shame, anger) that come with it are familiar.

Somewhere along the way, we’ve convinced ourselves that eating and loving ourselves & our bodies is hard and has to be a constant struggle.  We think we need to be perfect or we’re a failure. It doesn’t have to be like that.  When you eat to nourish yourself instead of punish, reward or control, you will eat enough but not too much and feel satisfied.  When we set up these parameters for ourselves – only this many calories, only low-fat, eat less than those around us etc, we’re planning out a trip that takes us straight to emotional eating.

When these negative thoughts pop up, think “cancel that”.  Practice saying and thinking good things about yourself.  What did you do well today? What are you grateful for? Acknowledging the good things about yourself and about your day/life are far more important to your overall well-being than knocking yourself down.  No one ever got where they wanted to be by being brutal to themselves and even people who have succeeded at the greatest things in life had setbacks along the way.  We’re no different!

There’s a huge amount of growth in just letting yourself be human, accepting occasional overindulgence as just that and still feeling love for yourself despite choices you don’t feel great about.  You have to believe that you deserve to feel satisfied when you eat, you deserve to not feel hunger constantly and you deserve to enjoy food.

I have so much more to say on this issue (it’s one of my favorite to work with clients on) but I feel like there’s a lot of info here and I don’t want to overwhelm anyone dealing with this issue.  If you struggle with emotional eating I hope you find some of the tips here helpful!  Ultimately, know that you are not alone. What you are going through is not uncommon and it is possible to have a more relaxed relationship with food with a little work (and in some cases, professional counseling).  The first step in having a healthier relationship with food is by working on the relationship you have with yourself.