Hello love,
Trying to resolve your emotional eating while rejecting your body is like building a house on quicksand. You might think that body acceptance happens after you heal your emotional eating, but it’s actually one of the roots that you need to address in order to resolve your emotional eating.
A lot of women are told they need to look a certain way in order to feel worthy and valuable. When you’re an emotional eater you struggle with food and as a result you might have gained weight or have different issues with your body. You struggle with wanting to look a certain way – to be accepted and to feel worthy – while at the same time using food to cope.
It can become a constant battle. You think “If only I could reach that weight, that body, I’d be accepted. I’d feel good about myself”. But then the stress and pressure that you put on yourself triggers you into emotional eating, sending you into a shame spiral, and you find yourself back at the same starting point over and over again.
So when you look in the mirror and you judge yourself, thinking “I should be thinner, I shouldn’t look this way” that criticism actually triggers your body’s fight-or-flight response. It raises cortisol, impacts your mood, and fuels emotional eating.
The shame and discomfort triggers your emotional eating. You’re back in the cycle, you turn to food to soothe yourself, to feel calm, to feel okay and to distract yourself. It happens so automatically that you feel out of control and you think, What’s the point? So you spiral deeper and deeper into the shame-emotional eating loop.
As you reject your own body and criticize yourself in the mirror, you’re creating the pattern that you don’t want…and keeping yourself away from your healthy body.
Let’s dive in:
- 1:50 What body acceptance actually is (not about loving your body!) and how it helps heal emotional eating.
- 3:03 Allowing your body to be vs. being at war with it and how it gets you closer to what you want.
- 3:30 Getting to body acceptance is a layered process – mindset and deeper trauma work are both needed.
- 6:05 Body acceptance and meeting your body’s physical needs.
- 7:13 Client example of getting to body acceptance by working on trauma around her body and stopping emotional eating in the process.
- 9:25 Free resources and next steps.
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 acceptance,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
