Hello lovely,

Today I wanted to talk about moving away from that feeling of being stuck in your emotional eating patterns. Personally, when I was moving through my emotional eating and binge eating, I always felt that I was walking through mud. Every step I took forward took a lot of effort and it was very slow.

And then I would go backwards and be in my patterns again. I was listening to conventional advice and thinking that I could overcome this but always found myself back in this pattern of binge eating or emotionally eating. I remember this one time where I ate like five bowls of cereal and I was just sitting there and it had been happening more often than I wanted it to.

I just felt so out of control that at the end of eating all of that food, I felt so stuffed, so disgusted, and really gross in my body. There was no one else to blame because I was the one putting the food in my mouth. I just sat there. I felt really disgusted and thought “how did I get there?”. 

I kept comparing myself to other people – why can other people eat normally and have a healthy relationship with food? Why am I in this position? Why is this happening to me? And why can’t I seem to stop it? For me, it was such a rock bottom. I wanted to figure out what was going on because it seemed to not be a problem for everyone else. I thought I was doing things to help myself and it still wasn’t working.

What Helped Me…

1. Awareness

When I started researching and looking deeper into what was going on, that was the first step for me to feel empowered that I could do something to change. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. Awareness was really the first step. I realized through my research that I was emotionally eating, that I was binge eating, that this was something people had. I was not alone.

So the first step was awareness and knowing that I wasn’t alone.

2. There’s a way out

From my awareness I realized the next step was finding my triggers.  Looking at what’s triggering this emotional eating for me at that particular time. Before I thought it would come out of nowhere. I had no idea why it was happening to me. I would just all of a sudden feel so ravenously hungry. I didn’t know that I was being triggered into eating, that I was emotionally eating.

I realized that I was being triggered into emotionally eating. I could tell I was being triggered, because for me personally, I would go towards the same type of food. So, I started to recognize every time I went towards that food and felt out of control hunger I was in my pattern.

3. The Gap

When I started recognizing the triggers I would be able to stop in between the trigger and the moving towards the food. I could then stop and figure out what was happening. Sometimes that would mean I would stop and journal to gain more awareness of what was happening in that moment. For example what triggered me, how was I feeling, what was really going on for me and to really stop and feel what was happening. Emotional eating is really eating to cope with emotions and not to see what is really happening.

If you stop and you pause long enough to really feel what’s under the the emotional eating and it helps you process and move through the emotions. You no longer need the food to deal with the emotion because you’re actually looking at it. And then from there you can make changes or create a true resolution.

What Connects it All?

Through all of these steps, what was the through line? Awareness.  Becoming more and more aware of the pattern and what’s going on. Sometimes in our life and we just stay at the surface and we think, oh, that’s just how I am.  But when it becomes really painful and you feel so out of control and gross in your body you want to look deeper.

When I started moving through this process with more and more awareness, I realized that I could come to a resolution. My emotional eating started to come less often. Maybe from every week, to every month, to every 6 months to not happening for years.

And then now it’s very easy to recognize it because it’s so out of the ordinary for me that I can pause and be like, oh, what’s going on? I check in for true hunger. 

So if you are feeling like your emotional eating is really out of control and you don’t know what to do. The fact that you’re watching this means that you have awareness to move forward. So you’re already going in the right direction. Awareness alone gives you this sense of empowerment and expansiveness and energy to move forward to find a solution.

I would suggest to seek out guidance to help you move through the process if you feel lost. I work with clients, but if you feel called to work with someone else that can help you reach out to them. Get more guidance, because sometimes when we’re on this journey and you don’t know what’s the next step, you can feel really lost. So it’s great to have guidance and someone to give you the steps. You already have the answers inside of you.

Emotional eating is something that you can get to the root of and move past. You can use it to move forward in your life in an aligned way. If you have any questions please let me know in the comments below.

To flow and resolution,

Michelle

Certified Holistic Nutritionist.