Routines don’t have to be boring! One of the best ways to create certainty and predictability in your life is to have routines, structure, and rituals. These can be big or little things: taking the same route to work or buying the same shampoo so you’ll know how it will smell. It can be having Taco Tuesday’s or reading 30 minutes before you turn the light off for sleep.

Here are three key ways routines can support you:

Helps support your sleep. This is probably one you’ve heard of, but a good routine or ritual before bed can help you get a better night’s sleep because it keeps your body on the same wake-and-sleep ‘clock’. Try lowering the lights (even lighting a candle), putting your phone on silent, or watching your favourite comfort show.

Creates a sense of safety and reduces stress. The predictability of knowing what comes next is a great way to calm your nervous system. Consider the times you worry or are anxious about a situation, chances are you can’t predict how it will turn ...

There are many benefits to being able to bring a sense of grounding into your day-to-day life! You don’t have to be someone who has high levels of anxiety (although the strategies below can be helpful), grounding can also make you feel more present, grateful, and connected.

Emotional eaters use food as a way to escape their body, to avoid experiencing certain feelings, either as distraction or numbing. Learning how to ground yourself can help lessen the intensity of these emotions that lead you to use food to cope and even help you emotionally eat less frequently. Try one or all of the strategies below and see what works for you!

Deep breathing. This can be as simple as taking slower, deeper breaths at your own pace or finding a patterned technique that works for you. This is such a great strategy that you can use in a meeting at work, around the dinner table, or just before bed.

Be in nature. Take off your shoes and feel the earth beneath your feet, turn your face to the warm rays ...

As an emotional eater you might feel constantly at war with your body. Trying to ignore cravings, stuff down feelings, and constantly critiquing your body. You might even feel betrayed by your body every time the scale goes up or your pants feel tighter.

A lot of this conflict comes from diet culture which encourages us to follow its rules instead of our own needs and wants. One of the most common rules, that you’ve probably engaged in, is the idea that movement is a means to an end to burn the greatest number of calories. If you’ve ever slogged through a workout or pushed past pain to hit a calorie target, chances are you have a not great relationship with movement.

But there are so many reasons to move your body that have nothing to do with your appearance! Read on to start reframing how you move your body and create more appreciation for all it does for you every day!

Forget Calories, Find Play

If you weren’t focused on how many calories you were burning, what movement would you...

Our modern society keeps us hustling: from work to parenting to errands to all kinds of activities. We’re taught that there is value in keeping busy, that being productive should be celebrated. We also are constantly bombarded online with content that highlights people having it all together, going on their next vacation, workout out at 5:00 a.m., or getting a promotion. You feel you have to keep doing to keep up!

And being busy can be a coping mechanism too.

There are a number of reasons you might keep adding to your to do list. First, keeping your mind constantly focused on what you have to do next stops you from having any space to think. It becomes an avoidance tactic that keeps you from feeling or thinking about what you don’t want to. Ever notice when the chaos of the day ends—driving home from work or after the kids are in bed—you end up reaching for food? That’s because constantly being busy is an avoidance tactic just like emotional eating. You can rely on food when your day...

There are many reasons people emotionally eat: to distract themselves, to feel numb, to have something to control. But one of the common reasons I hear from clients is that food brings them a sense of happiness that they feel doesn’t compare to any other experience currently in their life. This makes emotional eating incredibly difficult to stop relying on when you don’t have others ways of accessing this feel-good emotion. Does any of this sound familiar?

• A snack feels like an only acceptable break from grinding away at work or your to do list. Your brain makes the connection that not working = food.
• You only feel your body relax once the kids are in bed and you can eat alone in the evening. The connection your brain makes here is alone time = food time.
• You only allow yourself to have foods like cake or popcorn at events like parties or at the movie theatre. Here your brain connects special events (happy times) and specific foods.Our brains love to work on auto-pilot because it
...

One of the most powerful ways to begin healing your relationship with food is by giving yourself unconditional permission to eat. While diet rules might give you a sense of control, sooner or later you will be feeling out of control, guilty, and shameful when you ‘break’ those rules.

You might have heard of this eating approach before, but what does it really mean? And how can you use it in your day-to-day life? Below we’re breaking down this great step you can take to start loosening your rules around food and start bingeing less.

What Is Unconditional Permission to Eat?

First, it means letting go of the food rules you’ve set for yourself like not eating lunch until noon, labeling fast food as “bad”, or limiting carbs. Then, you give yourself permission to eat what you’re craving, when you want it, and in whatever amount feels right to you. The more you start to lean into this way of eating, the more you’ll notice what foods satisfy you, if you’re hungrier after a workout, and more...

Doing the work in therapy often comes with challenging the stories you’ve always told yourself. Over time we solidify ideas about ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us. This can sound like:

“I’m broken.”

“I’ll always be an emotional eater.”

“My mom did the best she could.”

But as you face these narratives about yourself, you’ll start to find the wiggle room, the space to start re-thinking how you see yourself and what that means for your identity. This can feel destabilizing! It is scary if you always thought of yourself or those in your life one way, only to unpack that things are different that they first appeared. It can feel easier to stick with the familiar way you’ve always understood your family and friends, and even yourself.

While this experience is uncomfortable, it is also a great sign that therapy is getting to the root of your experiences. Let’s flip the script: changing how you see the world is like taking off a pair of tinted sunglasses.

Let’s try t...

If you’re an emotional eater, you might have spent a lot of your life trying to stick to a diet or workout routine created by someone else only to keep feeling like you fail. This can grind down your sense of self-trust: you keep trying to live by the rules of others, not trusting your inner voice, and you keep feeling like you’re breaking promises to yourself by not following through.

Talk about being stuck in a loop!

It is time to start rebuilding your self-trust, an inner knowing that you are capable and have preferences. But how can you do that if you’ve been ignoring your inner voice for so long? Try thinking about how you support the people in your life who you love and then apply it to yourself. You might find that it feels easier to trust and show up for others than it is to show yourself the same level of support and compassion.

Here are a few specifics to think about:

Keep a promise to yourself. Start off with little things like setting the intention to brush your teeth b...

There is no denying that springtime is a season of renewed positive feelings, like hope and joy. More daylight hours, warmer sunshine, and the ability to crack the windows refreshes us. There is something about shedding puffy winter coats and clunky boots that also allows us to feel lighter—in all the senses of the word!

If you are someone who feels as if they are waking up at this time of year and aren’t sure where to put your rising energy and good mood, below we’ve got some great questions for you to reflect on!

Choose one—or play around with all of them—and get inspired to look inwards. Getting clarity can help you feel more in-tune with what fills your cup and is a great way to not only recognize your needs, but meet them. This practice makes you feel more fulfilled, meaning you’re less likely to reach for food to soothe yourself.

1. If your mood is feeling more positive this season, what is it that is creating this mental shift? How can you do or get more of it? What else in yo
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Emotional eating bubbles up when you don’t want to feel or experience something. Food is always available and seems like an easier route than facing things head on. But the truth is, your feelings just want to be heard and comforted by you. That is the key to breaking out of the emotional eating cycle, not more will power.

This sense of confrontation can feel very scary when you’ve spent years avoiding your feelings, so we’re sharing 3 great ways to get your emotions out in a way that will help you recognize them and move through them—instead of being stuck in the trigger-eat-regret cycle:

Use your voice. One of the best ways to help diffuse the intensity of your emotions is to talk to yourself out loud. This might feel silly at first, but it can be a great way to identify what exactly you are feeling. Find a space alone (the bathroom is a great one!) and start to find your words, for example: “I am feeling really attacked right now”, “I’m so worried I disappointed them and they are ...