Hello love,
At the core of emotional eating is this feeling of disconnection from 3 key areas. This sense of disconnection leads us to using food to fill that void.
Today we’re going to explore what we need to connect back to. Disconnection is a way for you to understand your emotional eating.
The way we’ve been sold to look at emotional eating is mostly about control.
Controlling our behaviour vs. what is missing.
Connection is what is missing in 3 key areas. When I work with clients we work on connecting back to food, their body and their emotions.
When we have the emotional eating pattern we are disconnected from these areas and they build on each other layer by layer.
This means that when we are young we have this basic connection to food and our body. If our connection to our emotions is nurtured by our parents and caregivers we will feel connected to our emotions as well.
BUT what happens is that our parents or caregivers are not able to help us navigate our emotions, discomfort, stresses to the degree that we needed to create resolution. This is needed in order to maintain connection.
Over time the message we get is something is wrong with our emotions and with us. Maybe the messaging is that we shouldn’t have so many emotions, not be so sensitive, etc
Emotions are messengers
But emotions are important, they are messengers. As children they are giving us information about our environment, about our discomfort, they are giving us messages about what we are experiencing.
As children we usually have a story around why we are feeling this emotion and that is where parents and caregivers can come in to help us create resolution.
Without this it leaves us with physical sensations of discomfort. Emotions like sadness, hurt, anger can feel very uncomfortable in the body because it’s destabilizing to our nervous system.
Without resolution we need to figure out how to deal with this distress. As emotional eaters we turn to food to soothe, to distract and numb out. We needed to find something outside of us to help us cope.
Check out the video at these timestamps for more on:
4:09 When in this position we are disconnected from our emotions
4:25 How this creates disconnection from food
4:48 How this creates the disconnection from our body
5:50 It’s called emotional eating for a reason but we’ve only been taught surface ways of dealing with them
6:24 Why thinking your parents tried their best holds you back from resolution
7:05 What is a trauma?
8:02 The steps to reconnecting back to food, your body + emotions to create ease & peace
Next Steps
1. If you are ready to start your journey to resolving your emotional eating you can download my free guide “What Are You Truly Hungry For?” to start discerning true from emotional hunger and catching your triggers HERE.
2. If you are ready to transform your emotional eating so that you can get to ease, peace and confidence around food and in your body with a step by step process and guidance then find out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program HERE.
To connection,
~Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
