Hello love,
Today I want to share with you a little bit more about how body acceptance plays into resolving your emotional eating.
I wanted to cover this because I recently posted about body acceptance, and it seemed to have been a bit misunderstood.
It can be hard for a lot of us that have struggled with emotional eating and body image to shift to this new way of “Body Acceptance”. I want to share more on how body acceptance plays into resolving your emotional eating and how we can get to this place.
What we’ve been taught is that we have to push, punish, be negative and critical of our body in order to get to our goals. Once we meet our goal we can finally have the love, acceptance and validation from the outside. Because we don’t really know how to give that to ourselves.
Body Acceptance is a shift to having more compassion for ourselves but it might be difficult.
How Do I Get to Body Acceptance?
So you might be thinking, “how am I going to ever get to body acceptance when I feel uncomfortable in my body, I don’t feel good about it. I really want to look a certain way.”
We think we’ll feel more comfortable in a certain body, or if we get to a certain place. It’s hard to be with ourselves where we are right now.
And I totally get it.
When I was on my emotional eating journey, I wanted to control my body (+ food). That’s why I was doing all the diets, seeing a trainer, etc. I thought if only I could get a handle on my body + food then my life would work out. I would finally feel okay, loved, accepted, of value.
But I was triggered into emotional eating often. I was in these critical, negative thought loops about my body. I was obsessing about food. I felt so awful. I knew after having a personal trainer and going to the gym 6 days a week for hours and yoyo dieting, that this wasn’t sustainable. And I wasn’t getting the results I wanted.
Even when I was able to reach “that size”, I only felt the way I wanted to for a fleeting moment. I still wasn’t getting the validation and acceptance that I was longing for. I’ve also had clients who reach the milestone and it doesn’t last. It’s building a foundation on sand. You don’t have anything to sustain you and you are back in the “what’s next” loop.
So as we move into body acceptance that helps us resolve our emotional eating. And when we get to our healthy body, it’s going to feel so much better because because we’ve been feeling that way along the journey.
More About Body Acceptance
Body acceptance is not about liking, disliking or even loving your body. It’s getting to this place where you have a more objective view of your body. As a society we put so much emphasis on the way our body looks because we think it equals our worth + value. Our value and worth go beyond just the way our body looks.
We have to go deeper. When we start looking at our body more objectively, we stop that negative thought loop. That’s important because that negative thought loop is creating a lot of stress in the body. That critical voice is triggered when we don’t push ourselves at the gym, we emotionally eat, we feel physically uncomfortable. The shame we feel from that critical voice triggers emotional eating.
We go to food to soothe and cope from these negative critical thoughts and the stress it’s creating.
Why would we want to keep motivating ourselves with this negativity? This negativity is pushing us into more emotional eating, and is creating more stress in our body. The stress equals digestive issues, mood imbalance, inflammatory conditions, weight gain, and the list goes on.
So why would we keep doing this to ourselves? Why would we keep buying into the restriction and the diet mentality and the punishing exercise?
Why wouldn’t we want to shift?
If we can get to the neutral, objective view of our body, that leaves more space to create healing in the body and moving towards the goals we want.
Those negative thoughts are triggering emotional eating as well as creating health issues in our body. Once we stop that negative thought loop, we eliminate a lot of things that is creating the body we say we don’t want to be in.
Now in this place of acceptance, we allow for more healing because we’re not punishing and pushing our body. We’re no longer in the stress response, triggering emotional eating and eating foods to soothe.
When we’re in this neutral place, this is where we can start tuning into our body what it needs.
We start having more acceptance for our current body. From here we can start appreciating our body which leads to honouring it’s needs. For example we start noticing what type of movement we need, creating quality rest, noticing when our energy levels shift and adjust to it and understanding how our body works.
We move from criticizing the body to acceptance, then appreciation and understanding of our body, and then we can move into loving our body. This is all happening without emphasizing the way our body looks. This is not to say that your body is not going to shift to your healthy or you can’t have goals but it is done in a different way.
For example when I started this journey, I was developing body acceptance, truly nourishing my body, and moving through the emotions under my emotional eating. This is the foundation of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program where I share the step by step on how to do this along with lots of support and guidance. I was working through all of these phases in the program.
My body didn’t change overnight, or in a few months. It had a very slow, gradual change that took about 2 years.
I showed up for months then years wanting to feel my best, put the best foods in my body, move through whatever triggers were coming up, and being okay with the body that I had. I did not focus on where I “should” have been. I allowed my body to unfold without knowing what was happening or going to happen. But I felt good along the way.
What was happening? What improvements can you see…
Now that I have a background in holistic nutrition and I look back, I was just healing my body from all of that stress that I had put it under.
When we’re under so much stress, critically, environmentally, emotionally, etc. – it takes a toll on the body.
It impacts our adrenals, and that impacts the way we store fat, our energy levels, our mood. If we have Adrenal fatigue or we’re in a really stressed out state, our body is depleted. It takes time and nourishment on all levels through food, body care and emotional wellness to get back to a place of neutral.
So we’ve been depleting our body with all the stress, dieting, restriction and pushing. Body acceptance. is where we can start to heal, and over time our body starts to transform because now it’s moving into its healthy.
For me that over time that looked like improved digestion, my energy increased and which that my motivation to go to the gym and move my body. I naturally wanted to do more. I was eating amazing foods because it felt good to me. I was working through whatever triggers came up. So I felt more calm.
And as I moved through these layers, my body started to transform. Eventually it started to release weight and get to what was optimized for it. Since that time my body has mostly maintained that level for many years now.
But because I went through that healing phase, it feels I’m at the place that I was meant to be. I moved away from the diet mentality, punishing my body and bypassing my emotions. Things that did not help me.
This is possible but takes time.
Short Term Diets Give Short Term Change and Long Term Damage
We jump into these diets time and time again trying to change our body. Yes, short term these diets will give you results, but they damage you long term. So you do it for a couple of months but you exhaust and deplete your body to get to this goal. Then after you’re depleted, you have no sustainable way of maintaining it. You’re in depletion mode and you go back to your old habits because there’s nothing holding you up and guiding you to create sustainable change. Not to mention the metabolic damage that has occurred, the increased self doubt and the shame of failure.
This is why body acceptance is a key and important part of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program.
It’s one key area that’s needed to resolve your emotional eating and to come into this acceptance, to remove those critical negative thoughts which trigger emotional eating. To really honour your body so you’re not pushing past your limits.
How You Trigger Emotional Eating with You Don’t Tune into Your Body
So let’s say for example, you don’t get quality rest. You’re going to trigger more emotional eating and hunger the next day because ghrelin will be increased along with cortisol. You’re going to punish yourself when at the gym and over exert yourself, which is going to trigger stress, mood imbalance, and then probably more bingeing and emotional eating. Because as emotional eaters, when our mood is imbalanced, we go towards food to soothe whether it’s mood imbalance from lack of sleep or an emotional trigger.
Of course, we need to be pairing Body Acceptance with True Nourishment and Emotional Wellness to truly shift and move past the emotional eating pattern.
I hope this video has helped you see that body acceptance is not out of reach. There are steps to move towards it as you connect back to your body. This is not about jumping from disliking your body to loving it. It’s about gaining getting to an objective view of the body, which leads to more appreciation + understanding and then love.
If what I’ve shared with you resonated and you are ready to resolve your emotional eating from the root then I invite you to find out more about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program HERE. This is my step by step process, with support, guidance, coaching and accountability to help you move through your emotional eating finally get to the root of it so you can feel confident in your body and around food.
To Body Acceptance,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist specializing in Emotional Eating
