Hello love,
Today I wanted to share with you some ways that you can move through your emotional eating with more compassion. As we recognize and see that we’re emotional eaters, we won’t instantly stop just because we’re aware of our emotional eating pattern.
I had an awareness of my emotional eating for many, many years but there was no way for me to actually stop the emotional eating. That’s because emotional eating is such an ingrained pattern. Unless we’re working with that deep rooted pattern and doing work on it, we tend to be taken over by the pattern, even though we might be really aware of it. I was really aware of mine because I was going to therapy and I was trying to work through it, through talk therapy.
I realized I needed to go deeper than just talking. I needed to find the specific triggers and be aware in the moment. This is something that I teach my clients.
Just starting…
If you’re just starting off in this journey and you recognize you’re an emotional eater, I’m going to give you some ways you can start being compassionate with yourself. Emotional eating is an ingrained pattern and it takes some time to move forward, especially if you’re doing it on your own.
If you have more support that’s targeted, you can move through this in a shorter amount of time. When I work with clients, we work together for at least 12 weeks. sometimes 6 months to resolve the pattern. It’s not many years like it was for me. Maybe you’ve been in the struggle for many years as well.
In general
So the first step is awareness and recognizing you have a pattern, knowing where it comes from, knowing when it happens. This is really amazing and important to recognize the pattern.
And the second step is the more we recognize the pattern, we’re hopeful that we can create more space between the emotional eating and pausing to see what we need in that moment.
But what happens when we know we have the pattern, but we still get caught in it?
Compassion Part 1
So let’s say you’re having a bad day and it’s just so overwhelming and so overpowering, you emotionally eat. You eat everything and don’t even taste the food. You’re just sort of inhaling the food and after you feel really badly.
So what can you do then?
So you might be feeling really badly. You might be feeling like you’re in a really low spot. But punishing yourself for days and days and allowing yourself to just kind of go down the spiral is not going to help you.
We want to learn how to have compassion for ourselves and let go of what happened. So we have we have one day of overeating or emotionally eating. We want to be able to let go of that day and start again.
The more we hold on, the more we strengthen the pattern. I know this because this happened to me for many years. I held on to the spiral and was really hard on myself.
I sabotaged myself because I felt there was something wrong with me. The more compassion we can have for ourselves and notice this is such a deep pattern the more we can let go.
“Yes, it happened. I’m working on my emotional eating and I’m going to let it go and I’m going to start again.”
This is where having support and accountability becomes really important, because when I work with clients and this happens I look at the circumstances. I look at their pattern and I can see their progress.
For example “Since we’ve been working together, it’s not every day you’re emotionally eating. It’s not every week. It’s been a couple of weeks. And so it’s OK. Every time it happens, we just let it go and we work on it a bit more.”
So compassion is so key and so important. So if you’re doing this yourself, having compassion is really the first step after you’ve had a binge.
Compassion Part 2
The second way you can have compassion for yourself is that when you see that you’re going through this cycle and it’s creating pain and it’s creating struggle for you – find help. Find someone that’s going to help you get out of this, because if you can’t get yourself out of this, you will keep spiralling. This is not being kind to yourself. You’re not giving yourself the care, the nurturing that you need, that you perhaps can’t provide.
Find someone who can give you a clear path and guide you on this journey.
Those are the two key ways to show yourself compassion; First, in the moment when you’ve had the emotional eating binge and secondly, finding further support so that you can move yourself out of this pattern. With help t’s so possible to move past emotional eating.
Find a compassionate way to move out of these patterns. You don’t want a punishing, restrictive way, negative way, because that’s what you’ve been doing.
Let me know, is this making sense to you? Does this resonate with you?
Are you looking for a different way? The old way is all about punishment and creating contraction and restriction. The new way is about having compassion and seeking out help and support. It feels more open and free in your body.
If you’re looking for more support and guidance, this is what we do in the Emotional Eating Evolution Program. Part of the program is having compassion for yourself, learning about yourself and getting support and accountability.
If you want to move through emotional eating and this resonates with you I would love to invite you to book in an Emotional Eating Assessment Call to see where you are at, your goals and how the program can bridge the gap.
To compassion,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
