So, for years, I thought I just needed to control my relationship to food. I felt so out of control. I thought if I was just more disciplined with food and knew how to control it, then I’d finally feel okay.
I’d finally have the body I wanted. I’d finally feel confident and accepted.
But the truth is, the more I tried to control food, the more out of control I felt. Looking back on my journey, I didn’t know I was an emotional eater.
Now I can see the pieces coming together. When I was sad or I feeling a certain way, I would turn to food to soothe myself. Sometimes that would mean eating a box of cookies, all the chocolate bars or bowls of cereal. But I didn’t have a word for it. There was no terminology for what I was experiencing. I really just felt that something was wrong with my body, with my hunger, and that I was constantly hungry.
The more I tried to control this behaviour with diets and other approaches, the more out of control I felt. What finally helped me shift my emotional eating, when I really put the pieces together, had very little to do with controlling food at all.
When I healed my emotional eating, before I became a holistic nutritionist, I was really inspired by food and how it made me feel. Once I developed a healthy relationship with food, I could see its power to create energy, vitality, and well-being. I loved that.
I thought I was going to become a holistic nutritionist to share that message, to take pretty pictures of food, talk about the benefits and help women make these changes so they could experience the power of food for themselves. I never really thought that I would be helping women with emotional eating.
But when I started working with clients, I noticed they struggled to make the changes I was asking them to make because they were dealing with the same issue I had faced.
They were struggling with emotional eating. They were using food to cope, to be a band-aid in their life, and to soothe them in times of discomfort and stress.
I knew I had to start talking about my own struggles with emotional eating, even though it felt scary. At the time I still carried shame around it.
Let’s dive in
- 2:12 I get it – I felt shame around emotional eating too but knew I needed to share my story to help women.
- 3:13 On the outside, it looked like I was succeeding but on the inside I struggled with emotional eating (and was trying everything!).
- 4:52 Hitting rock bottom and changing everything (except my emotional eating sadly).
- 5:39 What started helping me get a handle on my emotional eating…(spoiler: it wasn’t the diet book my therapist handed me).
- 8:12 The discernment you need to heal emotional eating.
- 9:40 Softening self-criticism, exploring triggers and emotions, and experimenting step by step.
- 11:23 I healed my emotional eating through experimentation, then went back to school to study nutrition and somatic work.
- 14:38 Next steps and free resources.
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 ease and peace,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist Specializing in Emotional Eating
