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...

Self-sabotage is a sneaky habit that is getting in the way of, well, yourself! You might have recognized your patterns, even be aware it doesn’t make you feel good, but feel helpless to stop the action. Self-sabotage keeps you feeling stuck because there is familiarity in the outcome. Yes, it might leave you feeling shame or overfull but it feels safe.

Self-sabotage behaviour can look like:

• Perfectionism. Needing everything to be perfectly aligned and ready before taking action. But the truth is “perfect” doesn’t exist, meaning you’ll never end up taking that step forward.
• Procrastination and avoidance. It is easy to pick up our phones and scroll or focus on what foods we want to binge on as a way to numb out rather than face something.
• Constant self-doubt and criticism. This can be feeling like you never measure up or that you can’t possibly meet your goals, so why even try.

These patterns of self-sabotage show up not just around a fear of failure, it can also come up as a fe...

Social media constantly gives us benchmarks to compare ourselves to.

Your Instagram and TikTok feeds are filled with picture-perfect videos and photos of happy kids, clean houses, and expensive vacations. These platforms are also overwhelmed with weightless “success” stories and details of restrictive diets to try to ‘give’ you the body of the influencer posing on the screen.

It’s tough not to get caught up in these images! It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, so even before reading the caption or hearing what they’re saying, the image they are projecting is perfection. They are trying to sell you on the idea that if you buy this, do that, you can look just like them, have a life just like theirs.

Talk about a comparison that is only going to make you feel bad about yourself.

But this slim slice we see of others online—a highlight reel—is no yardstick for your own messy, beautiful life!

Here’s the solution to social media comparison:

1. You’ve probably heard this be
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One of the interesting (and powerful!) things of becoming an adult is realizing that you can continue to evolve as you age. It is through discovering new parts of ourselves—likes/dislikes, values, and desires—we start to grow into a new version of our identity.

The more time you can spend doing things that make you feel good—work that is fulfilling, friendships that support you, movement that revitalizes you, clothing that reflects your aesthetic—the less you are likely to reach for food to fill those needs. You’ll never be able to do away with all the unpleasantness of life (bills need to be paid), but having things you look forward to can help ease emotional eating when these stressors do come up because you have something positive to rely on.

But all this personal growth, leaning more into and learning more about yourself, can feel both comforting (you’re not stuck!) and destabilizing (it feels new and overwhelming). You might notice feelings of sadness or grief crop up as who you...

When it comes to supporting our mental health, we tend to start with the big things: the quality of our sleep, what we eat, going to therapy, taking medication. This can lead to more confidence and awareness which are powerful tools! But you might also begin to notice that working on yourself has shifted your relationships with others in ways you didn’t expect.

As you implement changes in your life and your perspective shifts, you might find you grow annoyed or feel critical towards others you usually have felt ok around. You might even feel like you can’t show or talk about who it is you’re becoming. Your immediate reaction might be to blame yourself, piling on the guilt that you’re a “bad friend” or a “bad person” because you’re thinking about others differently, even critically.

If you dig past those uncomfortable feelings, you’ll notice that it isn’t about them, but that getting clearer on your values (and setting boundaries that go along with them) means you no longer align with...

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

Weight loss can happen for all kinds of reasons, from anxiety to happiness to stress to a change in routine. So, it should come as no surprise that emotional eaters come in all shapes and sizes! What I often hear from clients who have lost weight on their journey is that they still find themselves criticizing their body in the same way as when they weighed more.

Does that surprise you?

Many people I work with at the Centre for Emotional Eating believe that if they could just “get a handle” on their emotional eating that everything would all into place—their waistline would shrink, they’d be a kinder person, get that promotion, they’d finally do that thing they’ve always want to.

This is why dieting is so tempting: it markets itself as a cure-all when in reality it keeps you stuck in failure mode beca...

Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, will look a little different for everyone. But if you notice you’re more irritable, your sleeping or eating patterns have changed, or you’re more anxious or depressed, you might be experiencing SAD.

We’re 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 phone’s 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...

Going to the doctor can feel like more than just a chore. It might make your anxiety sky rocket as you face explaining your symptoms and feelings to someone you only see a handful of times a year.  

If you exist in a body that doesn’t ‘fit’ into narrow definitions, like BMI, there might be added anxiety that you won’t be heard by those treating you because they can’t see past your body shape or weight. This is called weight bias in medicine. It is when a practitioner believes they know everything they need to know about you because you are classified as “overweight” or “obese” by their standards. They will often highlight or even pressure you to lose weight as a miracle cure-all to any and all issues.

That is simply not true.

Many people with higher body fat percentages live healthy lives with clean bills of health from blood work to digestion. And you deserve the same treatment from a practitioner that everyone else gets—to be seen, to be heard, to be understood.

Knowing all this...

It can be so easy to get obsessed with the numbers on your bathroom scale and hop on/hop off every day or sometimes multiple times a day. You might be telling yourself that it’s “just to check in” but let’s look at your motivation a bit more closely:

If the number on the scale is higher than yesterday, do you have a bad day? End up picking yourself apart and vow to restrict what you eat?

Are you stepping on the scale more than once a day? Do you have set ‘rules’ for when you weigh yourself (for example, must be after using the washroom, must be without clothing, etc.)?

If you find yourself letting the number on the scale dictate your mood and actions, here are four reminders you need to hear. Feel free to print these out to read them when you need to, or even tape them on your bathroom mirror!

1. It is normal for your weight to fluctuate during the day depending on what you’ve had to eat, drink, or if you’ve had a bowel movement. And if you’re a woman, you can expect your weight to
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