The following blog posts talks about calorie counting in some detail. If this is something that might bring up negative feelings for you, please skip this post to protect your mental and physical health.

After eating emotionally you might be thinking you need to do a complete 180 and get really strict about what and how you’re going to eat next. A common way to feel in control of your eating is to count your calories. It’s become so easy these days as the diet industry has created apps that are always in the palm of our hands and can even scan labels!

Often clients will be able to white knuckle their way through a few days of eating low calorie only to find themselves binge eating at the first sign of stress, alone time, or even faced with a dinner they can’t ‘log’. And it can feel like being right back where you started after the initial overeating episode.

Very often it feels scary to let go of counting calories, but doing so can bring you back...

It might feel normal to pass by a store window and check out your reflection. But if you’re noticing more than simply adjusting your scarf or hat, you might be falling into body checking.

Body checking is any way you monitor your body’s appearance. This might look like:

• Pinching or pulling at skin to temporarily manipulate how your body looks.
• Examining your stomach in the mirror while trying to “suck in” as much as possible.
• Stepping on the scale often.
• Taking photos of your body constantly, swearing they will be your “before” photos.
• Comparing your body now to one you had as a teenager or to others around you.

You might even notice that these habits become even more frequent when you are stressed, feeling sad, or even just about to go on vacation! The issue with body checking is that you’ll never feel like you are measuring up to whatever you’re hoping for because it is a way of constantly critiquing your body. The diet industry...

For many of you who have been on the diet rollercoaster for years, you probably have collected two wardrobes: one you’re trying to feel good in now and the other is the clothes you hope to fit back into one day. You might even find yourself putting off buying clothes you feel your best in because you’re waiting to lose weight and don’t want to ‘waste’ the money.

Here at the Centre for Emotional Eating we hear this from clients often! Not only is there a wish to one day be the smaller size you were previously, a lot of the time you also have emotional ties to those clothes because of who you were when you wore them. For example, one client loved her blouses and pencil skirts because it reminded her of a time when she was happy in her career.

But getting rid of these clothes will not only free up real space in your closet it will also free up mental space. Here’s what we hear from clients once they’ve taken the plunge and cleaned out their...

A lot of emotional eaters use food rules to try and control their eating. This might look like:

• Counting calories, points, or macros.
• Not eating after 7:00 p.m.
• Not eating or limiting carbs, sugar, or fat.
• Leaving food on your plate.
• Drinking coffee or diet soda to fend off hunger.

Sound familiar? These rigid rules are a reaction to the out-of-control-feeling experienced when strong emotions take over and you head to the fridge looking for something to numb out on. We learn rules from our parents, friendship circles, diet culture, and social media. These rules also make you feel as if you are in control (at least for a little while), which makes it extra frustrating when you “fall off the wagon.”

It may seem logical to try and balance situations where you eat a lot of food with other times of much less food, but the truth is it doesn’t even out that way… And you end up getting stuck in the restrict/binge cycle. This looks like: strict diet > have a...

There is a big movement, especially on social media, to be body positive. It is the idea that you feel positive about your body—embracing how it looks, how you feel in it—most of the time. It is meant to lead to more self-confidence, self-love, and total acceptance of your weight, which all sounds great!

… But what if you’ve spent years absorbing diet culture messaging? Or you eat emotionally and that leads to feelings of shame and guilt around your body? It can seem impossible to get to a place where you unconditionally love your body and actively feel positive about it.

This is where the idea of body neutrality comes in.

Being “neutral” about something means you don’t have any positive or negative feelings about a topic, it simply is. This is something you can apply to how you feel about your body. If you constantly beat yourself up after going clothes shopping or suck in your stomach every time you look in a mirror, you might find ALL...

As the holiday season gets closer, it seems like invites for family, friend, and work events are rolling in non-stop. And dressing for an event can sometimes feel like putting on the armour before a battle. You consider the weather, if you’ll sweat through a fabric, if your jeans are fresh from the dryer and need to be stretch back out. You might always find yourself reaching for the same clothing items: black and drapey.

But we’re here to encourage you to use your clothing as a way to get a confidence boost! Here are five insightful tips to help you find clothes you love and feel your best in:

Be you, boo! First things first, find out what your personal style is without thinking about how something might look on your body (all black clothing “because it’s slimming” isn’t an option here). Are you called to soft yellows and greys, or do you love a splash of fuchsia against classic navy? While brand websites might feature only thin models, this is...

It is common to suffer from low self-esteem here and there. But often when someone is in an emotional spiral, or their depression is strong, out inner critic seems to be blasting negative thoughts on repeat. And it can be extremely powerful as it uses the first person:

• “I’m so fat. No wonder no one loves me.”
• “Look at how I jiggle. I’m so disgusting.”

Sometimes the voice might instruct you to pinch, suck in, or smooth certain parts of your body. These thoughts can feel true to us if we don’t challenge them. But how do you even begin to do that? Let’s look at the same comments above and see how we might push back against them:

• “I’m so fat. No wonder no one loves me. Wait. This can’t be true, my partner/friends/family tell me they love me.”
• “Look at how I jiggle. I’m so disgusting. STOP! That thought isn’t helping me.”

In both examples, you can see there is a need to break the negative...

Emotional eaters tend to be tempted by a quick fix, especially if you’re weight goes up and down with your feelings. Heck, that’s how they sell diets to us again and again: “lose 20 lbs in a week!”, “Here’s the one thing you need for lasting weight loss.” The truth is, there is no quick fix when it comes to a healthy lifestyle. And that’s true about therapy too.

When first dipping their toe into therapy, clients will often begin look for a concrete timeline on when they can expect to have managed their grief or processed their trauma. This makes sense: we want to know when the tough stuff will end so we can get on with living out lives. But the difficult thing about these experiences that impact our emotions, outlooks, and actions, is that they will always be with us in some capacity.

But don’t lose hope! Therapy not only gives you an outlet to process your emotions, but you also learn strategies along the way that you can draw...

You have often heard us say that emotional eating is never about the food, it is about the feeling behind how and what you eat.

You may want to eat six doughnuts because the sugar “coma” helps you feel numb to emotions.

Or one of your binge foods of choice might be birthday cake because you have positive memories of feeling good attached to that food.

Managing your wellbeing—mental, physical, emotional—and how your feelings react to triggers, can seem overwhelming since there are so many things to consider! This is why today we’re breaking down the 7 pillars of wellness and providing realistic ways to support each one in your life.

There is no need to overhaul your day-to-day life or try and focus on perfecting your approach to each one (because there is no such thing as perfect). After reading the explanations below, think about which one or two pillars you are called to and see if you can bring more awareness and action to that area of your life.

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Some foods we reach for when we’re tired Some foods we reach for when we’re upset Some foods we reach for because we have labelled them “good”

But have you ever stopped to think about what foods you enjoy? Having food satisfaction at every meal—you read that right!—can lead to fewer cravings and the desire to overeat. 

Food satisfaction means two things: that you physically respond positively to the food (it makes you feel full, gives you energy) and you also have a psychological enjoyment of what you ate (it’s tasty, “hits the spot”).

You may be wondering: how do I find out what I really like to eat? Believe it or not, this is a very common question. We are constantly told what foods we should and shouldn’t eat. If you’ve been around the diet block, chances are you’ve cut out whole food groups like carbs or fat or sugar at one point or another. Getting rid of this diet conditioning may seem impossible,...