Hello love,
Today I wanted to cover a bit about body acceptance, body positive and emotional eating and how they are all important.
I wanted to share about this because I feel that we sometimes stumble upon a concept but don’t see how it plays into the bigger role of resolving emotional eating.
I went through a lot of trial and error in my journey so I gathered a lot of experience on what worked and what didn’t.
Body Acceptance
Body acceptance is something I love to share with clients and this is part of the work in resolving emotional eating. A lot of the times in our society we are told something is wrong with us, with our body. To not listen to ourselves. Body acceptance is a way to be more neutral with our body and less critical.
It doesn’t mean we stay the same. We need to be in acceptance before any change can happen.
Usually, we already feel we are broken or something is wrong with us and so we try all these things to change our body. We don’t truly know what we need. Body acceptance is accepting your body right now. It may not be your “healthy” but we start here.
I’ve found that clients that are emotional eaters want to resolve this pattern because it can show up physical. For example as digestive issues, weight issues, disease, inflammatory conditions, etc.
Emotional eating puts our body and health out of balance this is why we need to resolve it at the root.
Getting to body acceptance is a tricky place for a lot of emotional eaters. Part of the reason that we don’t accept our body is that we are emotionally eating and that creates a body we think is “unacceptable”. We are trying to control it with the diets, exercise plans, pills and magic bullets because we think that if we finally look this certain way we’re going to feel ok, loved, accepted and validated.
Which will take away that internal pain.
We’re looking for our worth in the way our body looks.
Body Positivity
Body positivity is about accepting your body where it is at and that’s it. There is no real discernment about whether you are in a healthy body, if you are nourishing yourself, or optimizing your wellbeing and balancing yourself.
I talk about body acceptance and emotional eating because we have been so imbalanced with our emotional eating. We accept where we are now as a stepping stone on the transformational journey.
This doesn’t mean we fit into a prescribed “box”, size or shape. But as we start nourishing our body, accepting our body and moving through those emotions holding us back. As we rebalance ourselves we notice the body will usually shift.
Of course transformation happens at different rates for most women.
Bypassing + Transformation
If we jump into body positivity without doing the inner work to accept ourselves and nourish ourselves on all levels (food, body, emotions) we are fooling ourselves.
This can be a sticking point when we’ve spent our whole lives chasing a certain body thinking it will give us the acceptance and validation and we think “now I’ll be stuck in the same body” that doesn’t seem really good either.
On your emotional eating journey as you develop more body and self acceptance your body and will start to shift. But it is not because you are externally imposing that change. It is coming from within. This is how we create that sustainable change.
This is not about reaching a certain goal necessarily but as you move through this journey your body will start talking to you and want more movement and nourishment and balance itself out.
My Journey
When I was on this journey I threw all the physical goals out the window and my commitment was just to nourish myself, to feel good, to appreciate myself. I didn’t know what I was going to look like and honestly I was willing to let that go. I had been trying to fit into this box for so long, I didn’t know what my healthy was.
Along the way my body started to rebalance and get to it’s healthy .
This is what I say to clients as well – “you’ll find your healthy” as time goes on. It may take a few months or years as it was my case. This journey is consistent because you have a lifelong relationship to your body.
You don’t want to say “when I look this way then I’ll love you”. You’re hating yourself to look a certain way which feels icky.
The Cycle
I’ve found that we can emotionally eat because our body looks a certain way which triggers shame which triggers more emotional eating. Repeat.
Body image issues and emotional eating tend to go hand in hand.
When we work through this body acceptance piece we will feel more body positivity which is coming from a healthier place. We won’t be bypassing with “this is how I am” and ignoring our true needs.
Body Acceptance along with True Nourishment and Emotional Wellness are the keys to resaving emotional eating. This is how we come back home to ourselves, and start feeling at ease, free and confident in our body and around food.
Inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program we cover these areas with a step by step approach, support, guidance, meditations and more so you can resolve your emotional eating from the root. Find out more about the program HERE or apply and book in an Emotional Eating Assessment call to see how the program can support your journey.
To acceptance + transformation,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert.
