Hello love,
I wanted to share with you how you can start feeling confident in your body and around food to move past your emotional eating and ditch dieting. I struggled with emotional eating and dieting as both were intertwined. I used diets to help me with my emotional eating. I thought something was wrong with my body and that I needed to control my body and hunger. I had no idea what was really going on under the surface.
I work with a lot of women that are wanting to ditch dieting and emotional eating. They feel out of control around food. They feel like food is taking over. They are in this relationship with food that’s sabotaging them and their bodies. They don’t feel comfortable in their own skin.
Everything they’ve been trying is not working.
The conventional diets, exercise, pills and willpower. I was in the same place many years ago where I tried all the diets and intense exercise. I thought something was wrong with my body that I needed to fix + control my body and hunger.
I didn’t feel good in my body.
I was punishing my body.
I was trying to fit into the certain mold where I thought I’d finally feel OK enough to go after the things I wanted. This is what I see in clients and the women that come to me. They struggle with what they are conventionally sold to move past emotional eating. They don’t work.
I was in the same spot and I hit a very hard rock bottom. I threw everything out the window and had to start from scratch. I had to figure out what was going to help me move past this emotional eating and finally feel good in my body.
At that point, I didn’t even care what I would look like. I was over all the mental anguish and I wanted to feel good. What I discovered through a lot of trial and error, implementing different things, experimenting and educating myself was a method to move past emotional eating and to ditch dieting. I used it to move past my emotional eating and I’ve been helping clients do the same thing.
A bit about diets…
I’m going to share with you why diets don’t work and also what is going to help you move forward. When we’re using diets to control our body, we’re telling ourselves something’s wrong with it. We have it mixed up. The diet doesn’t necessarily know what we need. It’s not teaching us about true nourishment of our body. Its main goal is usually restriction for weight loss. Diets are not holistic and not in alignment with our body.
It’s not going to give us the health and the sustainability that we’re looking for. Diets do not get to the deeper issue of emotional eating. Why are we hungry all the time? What’s going on on this deeper level?
The key areas on the path to Feeling Confident in Your Body and Around Food
So there are all of these key pieces that are needed to move past our emotional eating and dieting. I’m going to cover those key pieces so that you can have some awareness and feel more empowered. You haven’t been doing things wrong, you just haven’t known what was really going on.
First area on the path
The first area that is important and key for emotional eaters and those of us wanting to ditch dieting is to learn about true nourishment and digestion.
This is an umbrella term. It’s about learning to distinguish between true and emotional hunger. So knowing when we’re truly hungry versus emotionally hungry and then knowing how to deeply nourish our body. Also to start satisfying our hunger on multiple levels not just calories. When we are nourishing our body we’re giving our body the nutrients it needs.
We are not restricting ourselves because restriction, especially in diets, can create bingeing.
Restriction creates deprivation in our body. So we’re constantly thinking about food and we’re on the hunt for calories. That’s where bingeing can start coming in. We start to feel out of control around food.
We want to have an abundant way of looking at food, really nourishing our body, caring for ourselves and being strategic about our digestion. We want to make sure we’re digesting our foods well because when our digestion is off, that impacts our mood.
(In) Digestion is another thing that can impact our emotional eating. So we want to minimize that.
Second area on the path
The second key area that’s so important is body acceptance. Diets pit us against our body, our body’s rhythms and needs. Women have different energy and movement needs throughout the month that diets don’t account for.
Diets don’t address the negativity we say about our bodies and the shame we feel. We want to take back our self-worth around our body and see our body for the uniqueness that it is.
Each of us is a little bit different. We have a lot of similarities, but we need to start listening to our body and tuning into our body for what we need. When we’re mentally punishing our body that creates more stress, restriction, and deprivation. So we need to come back to body acceptance. Tuning into and caring for our body reduces self sabotage. When we deprive ourselves of something, we want to do the exact opposite. And that’s where we sabotage sustainability.
Third area on the path
The third area that is so important is emotional wellness. If you’re an emotional eater you’re using food to cope, numb out, soothe, or distract you from those uncomfortable emotions that are coming up.
It’s like an addiction.
Instead of feeling and processing through the emotion we use food to distract us. This doesn’t mean the emotion goes away.
Eating is a temporary relief.
We need to learn how to be with, process and move through these emotions and get to the root of them. From here we can resolve the situation them and meet the true need. We’re not using a Band-Aid like food to cover it up and distract us from it.
When we get to that root, we no longer need food to cover it up because we meet the need and we find out what we needed in that moment. These connections with our emotions and food start happening from a very young age. W need to get to the root of that pattern and resolve it.
If you notice…
If you notice each of these 3 areas with true nourishment, body acceptance and emotional wellness, they are different aspects of us. It is a holistic way of looking at emotional eating.
We are not just calories in, calories out and controlling our body. We need to tune into what’s going to work for us and start learning about ourselves on multiple levels.
So these 3 areas are going to help you move past your emotional eating, ditch dieting and to feel confident in your body and around food. If you implement these areas you’ll know how to always connect back to yourself and to have a plan for yourself to move past emotional eating and ditch dieting.
If what I’m saying is resonating with you and you are ready to put aside diet and exercise plans and really find something that’s sustainable and works, I would love to invite you to apply and book in a call to discuss The Emotional Eating Evolution Program. The program encompasses all areas that are needed to move past emotional eating and ditch dieting. My methodology is a step by step plan with a lots of support and accountability to help you finally feel confident in your body and around food.
So if this is something that interests you, I invite you to book in that call. I would love to chat with you to see if you’re a good fit for the program and to see where you’re at and what your goals are and how we can bridge that gap.
To a clear pathway,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
