Hello love,
I wanted to share more about what happens as you resolve your emotional eating. Of course, I’m sure you’re here because you desire to have a relationship to food that feels good. A relationship that isn’t obsessive or controlling. You want to just feel good around food and in your body.
But if we don’t have the right tools in place, it’s hard to make that shift. When I was on my own emotional eating journey, I was trying all the things. The diets, exercise plans and all of these different things to really control my eating + relationship to food.
If I overate or emotionally ate, I exercised or used diets to restrict. I’ve had clients that have done the same or gone to extremes such as surgery to control their relationship to food.
So the aim and the way that I work with clients is to shift into a more abundant way of being with food. This doesn’t mean that we just let go as in the case with intuitive eating (you can look that up on the blog)
I find with some women they have this fear that if they eat in this way that’s nourishing, that their body is just going to go crazy and be out of whack and do whatever it wants.
But my question to you is – has any diet created sustainable change for you? Or with each diet, do you gain more weight or feel more out of control around food or feel more out of control in your body? If you’ve been doing that restriction mentality and it hasn’t gotten you the results, why wouldn’t you want to try a different way?
Our relationship to food is…
We have an abusive relationship to food when we have these diet rules, restriction and we treat food as just fuel. It’s a toxic way of relating to food. We’re controlling food, we’re manipulating food, we’re using food to get to a goal of looking a certain way so we can finally be loved and accepted.
If you are in a relationship with someone who did that to you, that would not be a healthy relationship. You would not want to have that. Am I right?
So you’re relating to food in this way and you’re relating to your body in this way. You’re essentially abusing your body with these diets which harms your body. This means you’re not going to get the “goals” you want.
So as we shift from that diet mentality and way of viewing our body, we want to shift into a more abundant and nourishing way of being with food and of course, our body.
The Process
This is the process we use inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program to get you from diet mentality to this nourishing way of being around food and in your body.
That entails some practical steps. A structure to flow from if you will. Within the program we’re learning tangible things like:
-true versus emotional hunger
-satisfying hunger on all 4 levels
-eating in a nourishing way that’s going to satisfy you
-optimizing meals so that you are digesting well, which improves your mood, so that you’re not triggered into emotional eating.
When you’re eating enough, you’re not restricting, you’re not going to be triggered into bingeing and turning on that obsessive thought pattern.
When you’re eating in this way, what starts happening is that you’re in tune with your body’s true hunger. You’re in tune with when you eat a meal, if it has enough vegetables or not. If you felt satisfied, etc.
Your relationship to food shifts…
Your relationship with food starts changing because you start feeling it in your body, you’re not thinking of the diet out there and restricting and controlling. You’re tuning into your body and seeing what feels good inside of you. This happens step by step inside of The Emotional Eating Evolution Program. In order to get to a healthy relationship with food, we move through three different phases; True Nourishment, Body Acceptance and Emotional Wellness.
For example in the program the practical steps of how you eat, let’s say day to day, are outlined. BUT it is a structure that you can flow from. This is important. You want to be tuning back into your body. You want to have tangible steps to know when you’re truly hungry versus emotionally hungry.
For a lot of my clients, that is a big game changer. Once they implement one change they add another. There is a shift internally because you’re experimenting and see what works for you. There’s so much nutritional noise out there that we need to listen to our own feedback.
Trying a connected way…
If everything you’ve tried hasn’t been working, again, my invitation to you is to try a new way. This was my path. I had tried everything. I was literally on my knees. I couldn’t take the mental anguish anymore. I couldn’t follow another rule or restrict. I had to rebuild how I related to food because I was in a horrible relationship to food and it was so toxic and so it didn’t take me a day or a month, it took me many years. But now with clients, it takes them a few months.
This is where we start creating that healthy, balanced, harmonious relationship to food. When we have that and we’re feeling good, nourishing ourselves, treating our bodies well and giving it the nourishment it needs, why wouldn’t it want to get to it’s healthy? It’s in a safe space to be healthy.
When we’re abusing and punishing our body we damaging it. We also damage our hormones, increase stress and our body is going to say “NO”.
No, you don’t get the body you want. You don’t get to feel good mentally, emotionally, physically.
Maybe you might physically get that body you want, but it won’t ever feel good. I was in that place, too, where I physically look how I wanted to look, but internally, it was built on sand. It wasn’t on a solid foundation. I wasn’t confident at that size or in that box. The physical goal doesn’t equal the internal goal.
I didn’t get the validation, acceptance and love that I was craving. Or the confidence because I built it on sand. I created this outside image that didn’t have any substance. If you don’t feel that way on the inside and you’re not doing that, it’s not going to be reflected on the outside. I’ve heard this from so many women. When they reach that weight, it’s on sand.
There’s nothing there to sustain them moving forward. If you’ve bullied and pushed yourself and restricted to get to a certain way, why would you continue that? There’s no motivation for you to feel good or to sustain that way of being. There’s no outside validation, there’s no internal validation. So how can you move forward in that way?
The shift to a healthy relationship
So the goal of my process with my clients is to get them to feel that way on the inside and to shift the way they relate to food so that they’re in that healthy relationship. They feel that internal motivation to go towards food that feels good because they’re feeling it in their body and that’s motivating them. They feel good when they eat a certain way, they have more energy, their moods are better. They’re not binging. They are not obsessing about food.
Of course, when we get to that place, why wouldn’t we want to continue with that? We don’t need anyone to willpower or push us or bulldoze us or bully us around. We want to do that naturally. And so that is the place we end up. That’s the place where you can end up as you dissolve your emotional eating pattern.
Invitation
So if you have any questions about what I’ve shared, please let me know. And if this is something that’s resonating with you, it feels like the missing piece, or it’s the way you desire to relate to food. In order to resolve your emotional eating and get to your healthy, I’d love to invite you to book in an Emotional Eating assessment call HERE. On this call, we find out more about you and what your goals are and how we can support you in the program.
You can also find out more information about The Emotional Eating Evolution Program here.
To a harmonious relationship to food,
Michelle
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert.
