Hello love,
I wanted to share with you a few tips on how to maintain sustainability and consistency as an emotional eater when you’re trying to make changes. I totally get it. I struggled with emotional eating for many years as a teenager and into my early 20s. I found it was a struggle to be consistent, to make progress. I felt that I was trying the latest diet or the next thing, and I never felt I could sustain my changes or be normal around food like everyone else.
So I want to share with you a few ways you can start creating consistency and sustainability as an emotional eater, because this is not just a simple willpower thing. It goes much deeper. When I work with clients we do these simple steps. You can start doing them yourself as well. The reason we start off this way is that it’s a progressive way to make changes.
Emotional eating is a coping mechanism. It’s a really deeply held, ingrained pattern in our brain. Whenever we feel something uncomfortable or stress, it’s our go to. Because we’ve had this pattern for so long, it’s hard to *just* one day to shift out of it. We have to go deeper, but we can start with simple steps, especially if you’re doing it on your own. This is how I really started.
How to Create Consistency + Sustainability
Step 1
The way to start creating more sustainability and consistency is deciding to commit to yourself. You commit to yourself that you’re going to find a better way. You’re going to find a new way to help yourself, because if you’ve tried X, Y and Z in the past, you know, those ways don’t work. You commit that you’re going to move past your emotional eating because it is so possible. I’ve seen it for myself and for clients.
It is definitely a journey but you can get to a point where food no longer is your go to when you’re stressed, it’s no longer your emotional outlet. If you’re here you see through what I’m sharing that there is a different way to deal with emotional eating.
Step 2
The second step is that you can start making small changes every day. Choose one change and you commit to it. You’re not choosing something that’s overwhelming. You’re not changing everything in your cupboard like when you go on a diet. That’s what diets do. They change everything in one go.
This emotional eating pattern is very strong and deeply ingrained. It’s been 20, 20, 30, 40 years of this pathway in your brain. It’s going to take a lot more to move past it. But the way we create a new pattern is that we we become consistent with that it (and resolve the old one).
So you can’t go and change 360 things, but maybe you can change one little thing.
You might not be able to maintain it consistently at first, but you keep trying. You decide to maybe drink an extra glass of water every single day. Do that until you’re just so used to doing it. Then after you do that, it may take you a couple of months or a couple of weeks or maybe after a week you’re consistent with it because you’re noticing how the water makes you feel.
Then you add in another thing. Maybe after lunch you go for a little walk and you do that for three days of the week.
So you come up with frequencies and schedules that are sustainable to you that you can commit to. You’re not going to go to the gym 7 days a week and drink 4 litres of water. You’re making a commitment every day of doing one small thing and then you almost forget about it and it becomes a pattern.
You’re making that small commitment.
Step 3
The third thing you can do which is more advanced. If you decide you’re committed to overcoming your emotional eating look for support and accountability. Like I mentioned, emotional eating patterns are deeply ingrained patterns in your brain. In our day to day life we might notice the pattern, but we don’t know how to get to the subconscious, to where the pattern is living.
The pattern is there to protect you and make you feel safe. So obviously, you can’t just get rid of it in one day. You need to get to it and resolve it and find a new way to feel safe or meet that need. hat pattern really is meeting a need for you.
The way you can do that is by getting support and accountability to get into that pattern on a deeper level and shift it so that you’re no longer white knuckling through it or giving in. I help clients with this and after a few sessions it no longer has that hold on you because you’ve really deeply resolved it.
So those are the three ways that you can start committing to yourself and becoming sustainable in your changes.
In Summary
First of all, deciding that you want a new way, a better way, so committing to finding that way. The second is that you’re going to make some small change that you know you can keep committing to, whether it’s one extra glass of water walking four extra five minutes, something small. You keep building up that commitment to yourself. And third is finding support and accountability so that you’re really showing yourself you’re committed to moving past this and willing to get to those deeper patterns.
In the Emotional Eating Evolution Program, we go through this. There’s lots of support and accountability. It is a step by step process so you can make changes that are consistent. We also look at the deeper root causes and patterns and shift it at that level as well. This is a great way to move past emotional eating and to ditch dieting and to finally feel confident in your body and around food.
If this program resonates with you, if this concept resonates with you, I invite you to book in a complimentary Emotional Eating Assessment call. This call is about where you’re at and what your goals are and see if the program is a great fit for you. If this is something that you’re interested in, please be sure to book that call.
To commitment,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
