Hello love,
I wanted to share more on why we need to (re)learn a new way of being with our emotional eating. When clients come to me I sense they think it should be easier to resolve their emotional eating. I mean what’s marketed is to eat a certain way and exercise. It seems simple but when they fail, they feel stuck.
We need to understand what is going on and find a new way to move forward. Because emotional eating is when we use food to soothe ourselves it becomes a coping mechanism.
Part of the reason we develop this coping pattern is that we learned it from our parents, caregivers or even in society at a young age.
When we are younger, we literally absorb these patterns and they become ingrained and automatic in our brain. So reaching for food in times of stress becomes automatic.
As a society we are taught to suppress our emotions, repress them, think positive or eat something to feel ok. We don’t deal with the emotion and use these bandaids. What we’re missing is true resolution.
Once we realize that these patterns are deeply ingrained we can have more compassion for ourselves and understanding.
This understanding helps us to see we need a new way of BEING.
What I see with clients and even for myself I went to the diets and exercise (sometimes pills and surgery) as the solution because we think we had to control our body and hunger.
When we don’t understand the deeper way this pattern is formed we will go to surface solutions. If we are using food to soothe us from our emotions then we need a way to get to the emotions.
But of course if we’ve done all the diets and now have a “diet mentality” we have another layer we need to relearn. We need to learn to truly nourish ourselves. So emotional eating becomes multi-layered.
Think about your parents and caregivers:
Did they show you how to nourish your body, to eat when you are truly hungry not emotionally hungry?
How to accept your body?
How to process through the emotions?
These things were missing for me and they are for my clients as well.
As I was going through my own emotional eating journey I started to put these pieces together. Each practitioner I saw gave only one piece, for instance my therapist didn’t have a nutrition background, understand the gut-brain connection and didn’t do the deeper somatic work with the subconscious. I became aware of some patterns but had no way to move past them practically.
When we have this emotional eating pattern we need a holistic approach because there are several areas to integrate and understand.
As emotional eaters we need true nourishment, body acceptance and emotional wellness.
With true nourishment we need to optimize our digestion because our gut-brain connection impacts our mood, discern true from emotional hunger, and learn to eat in a nourishing way where we are not restricting or depriving ourself and creating stress and obsession around food.
Diets are focused on restriction of obsessing about food.
Body acceptance is important as well. Think back to your upbringing. A lot of emotional eaters are critical of their bodies thinking they can get the love and acceptance and validation when they look a certain way. We need to (re)learn the rituals our body needs as well as how to appreciate it.
Emotional wellness is where we get to the emotions under the emotional eating and finally get to the root. Here we process, resolve and move forward powerfully from the body level.
These 3 areas need to be (re)learned when you are an emotional eater to finally resolve your emotional eating. If you have one piece that won’t create a true solution. Most of us did not learn these skills and we need to learn a new way to get out of this pattern.
If this is resonating with you I invite you to check out the Emotional Eating Evolution Program here. It is a step by step holistic process to help you resolve your emotional eating from the root.
If you have any questions please feel free to leave them below!
To a new way of being,
Michelle Lall
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
