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It is common to think about food: what you have to pick up at the grocery store, your weekend dinner out with friends, or even if you want a pastry to go with your coffee.
But when your mind is running a constant dialogue focused on your next meal or snack, how much and when youâll eat, chances are youâre experiencing food noise. You might have come across this term online, so today weâre breaking down why you canât stop thinking about food and what to do about it.
What is food noise?
We can define it as a preoccupation with food before, during, and after you eatâso all the time! This can come in the form of questions or criticisms. Do any of these sound familiar?
You might have heard of, or experienced, seasonal affective disorder (also known as SAD) during the colder months of the year. Common symptoms of SAD are irritability, changes to your sleep patterns or the way you eat, and worsening of anxiety or depression. If youâre reading that and thinking âthat sounds familiarâ but it is the Summer and you dismiss your symptoms, weâre here to tell you that SAD can also happen during the sunnier, warmer months.
Our brains and bodies like routine: it makes things feel in control and predictable. So, any time there are changes introducedâlike hotter weather, later sunsets, or change to homelifeâit is understandable that our system would react in a certain way, no matter if it is Winter or Summer. There are a number of reasons why Summer SAD can happen, but here are two big ones:
Day-to-Day Disruptions
You might be planning vacations (hello travel stress!) which can add to your mental load or are having to navigate having kids home on school break....
We all have bad days (heck, even weeks!) where we feel drained, angry, or even upset most of the time. If this comes up for you, it is time to create a comfort box. This can be a great resource to build yourself back up when youâre feeling low.
Hereâs how to do it:
The next time youâre feeling in a good place, put together a physical box or digital list that has things that bring you comfort when your mood is low. You can include:
Doing the work in therapy often comes with challenging the stories youâve always told yourself. Over time we solidify ideas about ourselves, our relationships, and the world around us. This can sound like:
âIâm broken.â
âIâll always be an emotional eater.â
âMy mom did the best she could.â
But as you face these narratives about yourself, youâll 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 youâve 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. Letâs flip the script: changing how you see the world is like taking off a pair of tinted sunglasses.
Letâs try t...
If youâre 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 youâre 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 youâve 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 doesnât 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:
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 âsuccessâ stories and details of restrictive diets to try to âgiveâ you the body of the influencer posing on the screen.
Itâs tough not to get caught up in these images! Itâs true that a picture is worth a thousand words, so even before reading the caption or hearing what theyâre 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 onlineâa highlight reelâis no yardstick for your own messy, beautiful life!
Hereâs the solution to social media comparison:
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 ourselvesâlikes/dislikes, values, and desiresâwe start to grow into a new version of our identity.
The more time you can spend doing things that make you feel goodâwork that is fulfilling, friendships that support you, movement that revitalizes you, clothing that reflects your aestheticâthe less you are likely to reach for food to fill those needs. Youâll 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 (youâre 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 didnât 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 canât show or talk about who it is youâre becoming. Your immediate reaction might be to blame yourself, piling on the guilt that youâre a âbad friendâ or a âbad personâ because youâre thinking about others differently, even critically.
If you dig past those uncomfortable feelings, youâll notice that it isnât 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 âget a handleâ on their emotional eating that everything would all into placeâtheir waistline would shrink, theyâd be a kinder person, get that promotion, theyâd finally do that thing theyâve 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...
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