Hello love,
Today I wanted to share with you why we need a holistic method to move past emotional eating and to ditch dieting. This is what I found as I was moving through my own emotional eating journey. I tried all the diets I exercise. I tried diet upon diet and failed. Then I tried again and I kept doing what I thought I conventionally I needed to do. I even went to conventional therapy and nothing seemed to work to help me move past my emotional eating. As I was going through this journey and trying for many years to control my hunger, to control my body, to do all the things that I was told I should do, I hit a rock bottom.
I realized I needed a different way. I couldn’t continue living the way I was living, feeling mentally exhausted and physically restricting myself. So I decided in that moment I needed to find a better way. I needed to get to the bottom of all of this. I started to figure out this new way putting all the pieces together.
There was a lot of trial and error. As I started putting the pieces together this holistic methodology started to form. Now, I use it to guide my clients and I’ve just seen them move through their emotional eating and get to the bottom of it.
Today I want to share with you the 3 key areas that we need to move through and embody as emotional eaters in order to get a handle of our emotional eating and to ditch dieting.
These 3 key areas are the foundation of my program (+1), The Emotional Eating Evolution Program. So as I share this with you, I want you to think about what we’re conventionally told about moving past our emotional eating. We’re not taught these 3 things that I’m going to share with you. What we are told is very surface level.
These surface level solutions make us feel something is wrong with us.
I want to say that there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s just that the system is really broken.
The diet industry and all of the things we’re told from external sources keep us in fear. They keep us going back to these solutions, thinking there’s something wrong with us. They don’t work with us and our body.
3 Key Areas that We Need As Emotional Eaters
1.True Nourishment + Strategic Digestion
A lot of the times diets are very restrictive; calories in, calories out, cutting out certain macronutrients. They keep us limited. We can’t eat this food BUT we must eat this food and we police ourself a lot.
What we need is to deeply nourish our bodies. We need to nourish ourselves, and the more nutrients our body gets, the better it is going to function. It will rebalance and get us to that health we really desire. It may not be a fixed weight or shape, but how we feel on the inside.
Digestion is important for 2 main reasons. First, we want to make sure we’re getting all those nutrients into our cells. Just because we eat certain foods doesn’t mean it is absorbed into our body.
Secondly, if we have great digestion, that means we’re going to have better moods because our gut is so connected to our brain. If our digestion is off, our moods are going to be off. As emotional eaters we use food to soothe when we feel discomfort.
2. Body Acceptance
The second key area that’s needed is body acceptance. As chronic dieters and emotional eaters, we tend to feel like if we reach a certain body shape or size or we can control our hunger, then we’re going to be acceptable. We’re going to be OK.
Body acceptance is coming back to your body, coming back to the rhythms of your body, the energy of your body, and also coming back to looking at the utility of your body, the function of your body, and really looking at what your body does for you rather than what it looks like.
Diet’s tell us that we need to lose 10 pounds and then we’ll be happy. It’s all about when you finally lose the weight, you’re going to be happy. That’s the messaging which keeps us chasing something outside of us.
Body acceptance is not about criticizing and punishing our bodies. It’s about just feeling neutral with our bodies. Neutrality gets us on the path to eventually liking and loving our bodies.
3. Emotional Wellness
The third key area that’s important for emotional eaters and chronic dieters is emotional wellness. If you’re an emotional eater, you’re an emotional eater because you use food to cope with your emotions.
we need to resolve those emotions under the emotional eating because the emotional eating is a coping mechanism. It’s not a resolution. It’s just how we cope with our emotions. Most likely we haven’t been taught how to be with our emotions, process and resolve them.
Diets don’t teach you this. They teach you to push past, to bulldoze yourself, to keep going without checking in with how you are feeling.
So you keep pushing and pushing yourself. You give up and go back to your old coping mechanism because it’s emotionally triggering. Emotional wellness is looking at those emotions, processing them, resolving them and hearing their messages.
Emotions are information telling us what we might need to change in our life, what we might need to add in. Emotions give us information and data. If we’re able to hear those messages, we can create a life that feels better to us.
Conclusion
These 3 areas are important for emotional eaters and chronic dieters. You need to have some mastery in these three areas because diets are going to sell you the next plan and tell you to push past your emotions and that you need to fit into a certain box. These are not sustainable solutions.
What you need is to deeply nourish your physical body, your mental body and your emotional body in a holistic way. This means you are considering all of you which creates a sustainable solution. This is what will enable you to feel at ease, free and confident in your body and around food!
If what I’m saying to resonates and you’re looking for more support, accountability, and a new way to move past your emotional eating, then I would love to invite you to book in an Emotional Eating Assessment call. I would love to support you!
To all of you,
Michelle Lall
Certified Holistic Nutritionist + Emotional Eating Expert
