Hello love,
Today I thought it would be interesting to share about the transformational journey of going from emotional eating to resolving your emotional eating. I wanted to do this with a case study of a client.
I wanted to share this case study to see how you can navigate and move through your emotional eating and resolve it. I know this can be daunting because if you’ve tried all the “solutions” that didn’t work, it can be hard to keep moving forward.
How do you know that something is going to work? You need to really understand the process.
Before She Started the Program
I want to share with you a client of mine, LB, and her journey. I’m going to share her journey so you see it’s possible for you to get to the other side and resolve your emotional eating.
My client, LB, when she first came to me, was at the lowest point with her emotional eating. The last thing she had tried was doctor assisted psychedelics. This is a pretty intense mode of trying to deal with addiction and trauma.
And she didn’t get the results she wanted. There was some change. She was still in her emotional eating pattern but the food didn’t taste the same. Before trying psychedelics she was a constant yoyo dieter for about 20-30 years and in the emotional eating cycle even longer, since she was a teenager.
She felt out of control with food, her body and her constant thoughts about food. When she came to me she was ready to get this pattern under control. She had watched my master class and resonated with what I shared. She knew she needed to do something completely different to shift.
Taking the Next Steps
She booked in a Emotional Eating Clarity Call. She resonated with the program and signed up right away. She worked with me privately for 12 weeks and what happened through that journey was powerful.
I guided her through the 3 main phases of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program. She had access to the digital program in the membership site, implemented the weekly lessons and showed up weekly for her sessions.
Starting the Journey
As an example the first phase is True Nourishment and this is where she started gathering information. She looked at how she was nourishing her body and the types of meals she was choosing. We optimized them so they digested well. We also looked at when she was triggered into emotional eating. It became clearer when her triggers popped up as she was nourishing her body.
I remember early on in our time together, she had this moment where she was emotionally eating and she thought, “maybe I’m tired, maybe I’m xyz”. But as we worked with that trigger, it was about a disagreement she had with her partner from a few days before. She kept avoiding what was going on and the emotional pressure built up and triggered her into emotional eating.
Emotional eating might not show up instantly, it might not be that day, but it will come up eventually. If you don’t deal with it when it’s triggered, it will fester and erupt into an out of control binge.
Working with Triggers
We worked with the trigger. We did the somatic meditations with psychotherapy tools together and she worked on the mediations on her own as well. We went deeper into the root of what was going on for her. It was really interesting, these roots, they went back to different time periods in her life. Sometimes it went back to when she was very young, a teenager and at different stages of her life where these emotions got stuck and looping creating this block in her.
We resolved them at the root and met her true needs. Those emotions were triggering her to go towards food to comfort herself because she didn’t know how to really move through them. I want to add in here, even though she did psychedelics and removed some trauma, it wasn’t specific to her emotional eating. It was just a general sweep of removing trauma. When I work with clients, we’re super specific about the emotional eating triggers. We have trauma from many things and it might not always show up with the food choices or the emotional eating pattern. We have other coping mechanisms beyond emotional eating as well.
Having a Specific Program Makes all the Difference
The Emotional Eating Evolution Program is specific to the emotional eating pattern and helps us shift our relationship to food, our body and our emotions. We worked through this specific emotional eating event and after our first session her pattern started shifting. She started to notice she was not obsessing about food throughout the day and she wasn’t as obsessively hungry.
That obsession around food stopped. The constant voice in our head is distracting us from what’s going on under the surface and being triggered. Once we get to the root and move through the trigger the voice dissipates. What we’re learning inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program is a safe way to be with and process what is going on, what’s being triggered.
More on Somatic Meditations
When we do the Somatic meditations, we create a way that feels safe in the body. It’s done in a resourced way. If we had parents that knew how to regulate our emotions and help us move through them when we were younger, we would have learned this. But if we didn’t (which is most people and especially those with emotional eating) we have to learn this.
My client had come from a family where her mother had an addiction and so she was numbing out on her own emotions and what was going on. So of course, how could she teach her daughter that? My client now had to now learn this.
We create this space where it’s safe and we are moving gently and compassionately through resolving what happened. We are processing it, integrating it at a body level where we store trauma. Whatever is left unresolved is a trauma, whether it’s a big or small emotional trauma. It doesn’t have to be the big things. We move through it and we clear it out from the root and then we can create a new way forward, a more powerful way forward that actually meets our true needs. We’re not going to food to soothe ourselves, so we’re really resolving it at this root level.
Other Triggers the Come Up and Feeling Confident
This is what I did with my client. So as we were moving through the program, other triggers came up around body image and wanting to lose weight quickly. That was another trigger and distraction from what was really going on under the surface. When we resolved that, my client started to feel at ease in her body. She started to feel confident as she was.
She felt confident that if she kept nurturing and nourishing her body with foods that felt good, making the right choices, having body acceptance and resolving those deeper emotional root issues, she was going to get to her healthy and it didn’t have a timeline. That allowed her body to relax and remain calm and it just shifted her into this new way of being.
She wasn’t pushing and punishing and reaching for that external acceptance and validation. She created that internally from the work she did in the program. So as she moved forward in her journey, she’s making all her choices from that place of confidence. It is not out of a race to get somewhere, but because she wants to feel good in her body, to nourish it, to take care of it and honour it.
This was really beautiful. She got in touch with her highest self and shifted the way she was looking at things. This is something that didn’t come out of all of the other things she was trying, even though she went on doctor assisted psychedelics it wasn’t specific to her emotional eating pattern.
This is why everything in the program is set up so you are learning how to truly nourish your body and connect with food. You’re learning how to have body acceptance and connect with your body, and you’re learning how to move through your emotions.
A New Way of Being
When we do the deeper somatic work, we have the structure in the program in place that is going to allow you to move forward powerfully. At the end of the program, my client had a heartfelt thank you and that she was grateful for my guidance to help her shift into this new way of being. She felt calm around food and calm in her body. She felt present which is the goal of the program. I was grateful to see her transformation and as she showed up each week and did the work.
I guide my clients, but they have to show up, do the work and commit themselves to move through this. It’s co-creative.
I hope LB’s story helps you see it is possible to move through this pattern. Of course this was an overview and the step by step details + support is inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program. If you are feeling called and you would love to resolve your emotional eating and you want the support, guidance, accountability, and step by step process, then I’d love to invite you to find out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program HERE.
To true transformation,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist specializing in Emotional Eating
