Do you sometimes sabotage your successful efforts to exercise and eat healthy with episodes of “emotional eating”? Some of us do. I certainly have. It can be so frustrating to be caught in this cycle but there is a way out. I would like to offer a few suggestions that might be helpful.
The next time you eat something, notice if you are hungry when you choose your food. If you are not physically hungry, is there another kind of hunger present? What is beneath this craving for food? Are you feeling stressed, or bored, or sad, or lonely, or……….? Are you trying to compensate for a lack of fun or nurturing in your life?
Overcoming Emotional Eating: Comfort
Sometimes we may use food to comfort ourselves. Now there is nothing essentially wrong with this. And, of course, we all certainly deserve to be comforted. However, there are several problems with our comforting ourselves with food. First, the comfort we receive is very temporary. Second, eating for comfort can sabotage our efforts to create trim and healthy bodies. Third, it can keep us locked in a food addictive cycle, especially if it is sugar or carbs; and finally, and most importantly, what we were REALLY hungry for in the first place will remain unconscious and unfulfilled, only to revisit us again and again and again!
There are many good reasons to break this cycle! We will not only gain our physical health and a lighter body but we will also balance and improve many other areas of our lives as well.
This false hunger feels physical and usually does have some physical sensations but, if you can pause to feel them, you will see that they are different than the sensations of physical hunger. At the basis of these sensations is usually some kind of uncomfortable feeling that may or may not be connected to a thought. Our first inclination is to move away from the discomfort, to cover it up, or to change it. Of course, that is what we are trying to do when we reach for that piece of cake, candy, bread, or extra helping.
Overcoming Emotional Eating: What Are You Hungry For?
The first step we need to take to break free from this cycle is to pause just long enough to actually feel the feeling. Take a deep breath. Be still. Notice where you feel it in your body. Breathe again. Just allow it to be there, just as it is, for another moment. Don’t try to change it or make it go away. Feelings and emotions are like waves that naturally rise and fall as they move through us. This natural rising and falling, however, can be interrupted when we resist, suppress, or repress a feeling (which is what we do when we reach for food or some other distraction). So, the first step to change is acceptance. Just for a few moments, try to be willing to feel whatever it is that you are feeling. Remember to consciously breathe! You may begin to notice that the feeling is beginning to change or you may notice other feelings that are present as well. You, then, may want to ask yourself, “What am I really hungry for?”
This may be about loving ourselves enough to give ourselves what we are really hungry for! Like any practice, it gets easier the more you do it. Learning to experience and process our feelings will not only free us from emotional eating but will allow us to fulfill the other hungry areas in our lives and enable us to live our lives consciously.
