Hello love,
When I was on my own emotional eating journey I had a lot of body shame. My clients usually experience this as well.
I thought I didn’t look the “right” way and if I could then I would finally have that love and acceptance. I could finally be visible in the world and not hide myself.
This was the belief I had in my mind.
It’s pretty obvious if we look around us in society, in media, and in general that the pervasive belief is that if we look a certain way then we will automatically be loved, seen and accepted.
And those are some of our basic human needs so of course we would want that. But this is just a belief because those needs are available to us without a certain body size or shape.
So this is where these beliefs about our body and our emotional eating can collide. If we feel badly about how we look we then go to food to soothe ourselves.
This puts us back into this spiral of emotionally eating, feeling worse in our body and then emotionally eating.
I want you to know there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you, you’re not broken and don’t need to be fixed. But there are some things that need to be looked at and healed.
Emotional Eating Pattern
Emotional eating is a pattern that usually stems from childhood. When our parents or caregivers shamed us for certain emotions or didn’t help us regulate ourselves we had to cope. We developed a pattern of coping with food because it temporarily makes us feel good.
As an emotional eater as life becomes stressful we turn to food and eventually that pattern leads to weight issues, and health issues. We then start feeling worse because to us our body is tied into our worth and so begins the cycle of shame and hiding from others.
This judgement is internal. It has been internalized from society and now we live by it.
So now we have 2 issues – body shame and emotional eating. This is why in The Emotional Eating Evolution Program these areas are covered as one triggers the other.
What can you do?
We need to start feeling good internally which starts with nourishment. We need to start accepting our body and looking at the emotions under our emotional eating.
In the Body Acceptance Phase we work specifically with the body where we learn to move from shaming our body to acceptance which is more neutral. In this space we can authentically see how we want to transform.
This reduces the internal shame.
When we are truly nourishing the body we start feeling good internally by optimizing our digestion and reduce binging. We start feeling good which reduces shame that triggers emotional eating.
When we add in the emotional wellness piece and use the somatic meditations with parts work and inner child work we start to feel at ease in the body and get to the root of the pattern.
All of this together will help you physically feel better in your body as you connect back to yourself on all levels. This means you feel good physically in your body, you are less critical and you also feel more at ease in your body.
Invitation: If you are ready to resolve your emotional eating and feel more at ease in your body then I invite you to book in an Emotional Eating Assessment call here to see how The Emotional Eating Evolution Program can support you.
To freedom,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
