Hello love,
Have you ever reached for food when you weren’t hungry and then felt really guilty afterward? You might think it’s about willpower, a lack of discipline, but more is going on here. The truth is that emotional eating starts way before the food hits your mouth.
Today I’m going to explain what’s really happening – what’s going in your body, and what you can do to find ease and peace around food and in your body.
Your perceptions and triggers have a huge impact on your body and your urge to reach for food.
Let’s say, for example, your boss says something to you at work and it triggers you. Suddenly, you find yourself eating voraciously and thinking, “Oh my God, what just happened?”.
When your boss spoke in a certain tone, it triggered an old memory or old trauma in your body. That shifted your nervous system to fight or flight (stress mode), releasing cortisol, which then spikes blood sugar. This leads to a mood imbalance — and from that imbalance comes the urge to eat. Emotional eating becomes your body’s way of trying to “regulate” and soothe itself.
You can see that it’s not really the food – the apple, the chocolate, whatever snack you had.
It’s really about your body trying to regulate itself. The deeper issue is how you learned to deal with your emotions. Many of these reactions are rooted in childhood. Emotional eating is a coping mechanism – something you would have developed when you were younger, when you felt an emotion, and you weren’t given the support to move through them by your parent or caregiver. When your feelings weren’t fully seen, heard or validated.
Because of that, you weren’t able to process those emotions. You had to find a way to cope – to self-soothe – and food became that for you.
Let’s dive in:
- 1:51 Food can be soothing but it’s still a bandaid to what we truly need and willpower is not the answer.
- 2:20 Why were you triggered into emotional eating?
- 2:46 So how do you actually move through these triggers and not use food?
- 4:22 Example of being triggered at work and the shift once you heal the root cause.
- 4:46 Food is not the enemy but it can support us in this journey.
- 6:05 Client example: reaching for chocolate at work and what she really needed instead.
- 7:32 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 healing,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
