Find support not just for emotional eating, but all aspects of your well-being.
There may come a time on your journey where you feel like you want to explain how and why you emotionally eat to those you trust. You might feel in your gut that you would benefit from opening up and sharing your experiences. But emotional eating is complex, where should you even begin? Weâve got a number of concrete examples below to help guide you!
We want to be clear: you donât have to explain or justify your feelings or actions to others. This post is intended to support those who feel like speaking about their experiences to someone they trust will help support them on their journey. Remember: no one gets to comment on your body (even if it is weight loss).
A good first step is to check in with your person and see if they have capacity for you to share. This can set the tone of your interaction by encouraging limiting distractions, finding a quiet space, and making sure they are in a good mental place to support you.
Start by explaining the link between emotions and food, that ...
We recently asked our followers what time of day they feel is the worst for their emotional eating. And an overwhelming number of you said night time. Know that you are not alone! It is incredibly common to have the evenings be a time where emotional or binge eating ramps up. And there are very good reasons why you overeat late at night, and none of them are because youâre âcrazyâ or âlack willpower.â Here are 5 common reasons emotional eating comes up at night and what you can do to address each one.
You ate how you âshouldâ during the day. Restricting what and how much you eat throughout the day will ultimately lead to binge eating (even if you are trying to âresetâ from your last binge!). Not only is your body asking for more food, it is asking for food that is pleasurable. At the end of the day, youâre left feeling hungry and unfulfilled.
January always has that fresh feeling! There are 12 months to come and the possibilities feel endless. This might give you the knee-jerk feeling to set all the goals, including weight loss ones. You might be thinking, in this atmosphere that feels like anything is possible, that *this* year is the one you âlose the weight for good.â Youâve made a grocery list, thrown out the last of the holiday foods, and you signed up for that new gym membership.
But did you know that about 95% of diets fail? January might feel new and exciting, but many weight loss resolutions end before it even becomes February. Thatâs because restriction sets you up for binge eatingâit becomes a cycle where you are depriving yourself âon the wagonâ and then feel out of control when you give into cravings.
Instead of focussing on the number on the scale, here are examples of New Yearâs resolutions to support your mind, body, and soul!
Add happiness habits.
Youâll notice this one is about adding in new things, in...
Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, will look a little different for everyone. But if you notice youâre more irritable, your sleeping or eating patterns have changed, or youâre more anxious or depressed, you might be experiencing SAD.
Weâre sharing four things that can help you find a mood boost in the darkest, coldest days of winter. We recommend creating a list you can easily reference, either in a notebook or on your phoneâs notes app, of things that make you feel good. Either take inspiration from the ideas below or brainstorm your own! Personalizing an approach to support yourself through the next few months is a great way to show yourself some love.
Support
This can come in many forms, like a regular coffee date with a friend, scheduled therapy sessions, or speaking to your doctor about medication. Consider who in your life makes you feel supported and tap into that! If you feel intimidated going to the doctor, read this blog post for a little confidence boost.
Hygiene
When...
You might think of emotional eating as something that comes up for you when you have strong feelings like anger, stress, or sadness. These are emotions that are usually easy to identify by your inner dialogue or your outward reactions like tears or yelling. But emotional eating can sneak in with all kinds of feelings.
Ones you may not have thought about is eating when youâre bored or lonely. These reasons for overeating can be challenging to identify because we often do them without any sense of awareness. Youâre not feeling overly emotional and yet you find yourself walking the same route to the fridge or pantry thinking it is simply routine.
When youâre bored or lonely, food as a solution to missing a connection makes sense. Your favorite treats feel comforting, plus they are easily availableâit never lets you down or doesnât show up (like you might be feeling about people).
The first thing to do is to find out what kind of connection youâre looking for: is it a social connection ...
If you are on your therapy journeyâin one-on-one sessions, online courses like First Step, or otherâwe applaud you! It takes a lot of courage to open up and decide to actively work on yourself.
You might be finding that after a session you donât feel 100%. You may walk away feeling sad, angry, exhausted or anything in between. And we want to reassure you that that is completely normal. It can be emotionally and physically draining to be vulnerable when looking at your behaviours and digging into your past traumaâsome even call this feeling âa therapy hangover.â
Hereâs how to not let these after appointment feelings stop you from doing this important work. Many clients have shared that there are specific things they do to give themselves comfort.
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. đ
After eating emotionally you might be thinking you need to do a complete 180 and get really strict about what and how youâre going to eat next. A common way to feel in control of your eating is to count your calories. Itâs 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 canât âlogâ. 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 in-tune with your body in a way yo...
A lot of emotional eaters use food rules to try and control their eating. This might look like:
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 âfall off the wagon.â
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 doesnât even out that way⌠And you end up getting stuck in the restrict/binge cycle. This looks like: strict diet > have a craving or emotional exper...
Binge eating feels all encompassing. You feel helpless to stop what and how much you are going to eat, and chances are you are doing it in the moments where you are alone. Here are three signs you may have missed during a binge and how to feel better prepared the next time this urge comes up for you:
There is a big movement, especially on social media, to be body positive. It is the idea that you feel positive about your bodyâembracing how it looks, how you feel in itâmost 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 youâve 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 âneutralâ about something means you donât 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 your ideas around your body are negative. The...
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