Can we ever get enough of what we don’t (truly) want?
Will food really make me feel better?
This is probably the question that we do not even get to ask ourselves, right?
I am so honored to do the work that I do with the women that I work with. I respect them so much for who they are and the work they are trying to do in their lives.
This is a picture I often hear: somewhere along the way, often during the teen years or in their twenties or thirties, life become very stressful. VERY MUCH SO. If you were a teen, perhaps it was family conflict, feeling different, feeling lonely, not being able to connect with people your age.
If your emotional eating started when you went off to college, perhaps the amount of freedom and the experience of having less support close to you (if you had moved away for school) made it so that you needed to rely on something to cope, and that something started being food. Maybe be you had a significant other whose presence in your life made you feel less than, defective, flawed. And paradoxically, food become your refuge.
Different avenues yet all leading to emotional eating
The avenues through which we start relying on food as a way of coping are multiple and varied. Perhaps you see your experience reflected on some of these examples. Perhaps you do not. What probably is true is that in the moments you turned to food, you felt pretty alone with your charged feelings, whatever those were. Maybe sadness or despair. Maybe high stress and anxiety. Maybe boredom and being unsure of what direction you wanted your life to take.
The good news is that, as painful as emotional eating is or has been for you, there are ways in which we can address this behavior. There are thoughts, feelings, mindsets, behaviors, routines, structures that can be looked at deeply to understand, at a more profound level, what is food a substitute for—for you, in your own unique life circumstances. What are we looking for food to “do” for us when we eat for emotionally reasons? Are we looking for relief? Are we looking for company? Are we just trying to sit down because we need a break and we do it with food in front of us? Is food helping us “postpone” something that needs to be done but that it is hard to do? Are we trying to “drown” the grief of a loss with some good looking, tasty foods?
It is all human.
Would you like a mini-structured path for your work in this area?
Download my free workbook! In this workbook, you’ll have the opportunity to:
Become more aware of your triggers and their sources
Feel more clarity about what is going on in your inner world in what respects to food
Be less on automatic pilot
Feel more confident in your ability to be intentional in all what relates to decisions about food
Have you every been “sort of” in a similar position?
It really IS all VERY human
Emotions can be unbearable, overwhelming, and spill over so much that we feel compelled to do something to stop them for taking over. And food, even if it is for a very brief moment (minutes or hours) might get that job done, right?
Emotions lose a bit of their edge, suddenly it feels less overwhelming, we are distracted, we are smelling the food, we are looking at something (our plate) that looks good, positive associations we have with food may come up. Food may be a way that loved ones showed their care and affection. Or we may be just chewing fast somewhat mindlessly and that, paradoxically, becomes an outlet for the feelings we are experiencing.
And all of a sudden, we are eating and dopamine is released in our brains and that also makes us feel a sense of comfort. Have you realized that it is harder to be very [INSERT A CHARGED, DIFFICULT EMOTION, like sadness or grief or anxiety] when you are in the process of eating or have your stomach full? A lot of people who emotionally eat feel a sense of relief and comfort while eating or immediately after. This is why this is a behavior that it is hard to leave behind. Because it is both reinforcing in and of itself but also detrimental to our emotional and physical well-being if we engage with it often enough.
Better understanding what thoughts, feelings, memories, images are prompting us to eat out of a desire to feel better is key. It is the first step to start separating the emotional state we are in (for example, despair) and the behavior (in our case, eating). In the gap between the awareness of the emotion we are feeling (not only what emotions but the strength of these emotions, the source of these emotions, the triggers of these emotions, our history in relationship to these emotions, and so on) AND the action of eating is where magic can happen. And by magic I mean our ability to do something with those emotions that is different from eating as a self-soothing mechanism.
I will leave you with two thought-provoking quotes that I feel very much relate to this conundrum of emotional eating:
“You can never get enough of what you don't need, because what you don't need won't satisfy you.”
Dallin H. Oaks
and
“You can never get enough of what you don't want.”
Dr. Wayne Dyer
For women who emotionally eat, most of the time, they really don’t want to do it. Or I should say, there is a significant part of them who do not want to engage in this behavior. Yet, at the same time, they feel they need some relief, containment, comfort, break, distraction [you can insert here the emotion or feeling that food allows you to feel that feels good]. And thus they eat.
But shortly after, they start feeling the “dark side” of this behavior, such as the guilt, shame, powerlessness, disappointment, sadness, and/ or the loss of hope that we so often feel. Perhaps these feelings are a gentle reminder that what we truly want and need is something “other than” food—which may be to fulfill a basic emotional need of feeling emotionally safe and contained.
If you would like to explore ways in which you may begin to address this behavior for good, read on.
Curious to know more?
Take the quiz to begin your journey!
It will help you identify your main emotional eating triggers as well as provide opportunities for insights, resources, and tips to come your way. This quiz will help you to continue deepening your understanding of your emotional eating, which is an essential part of this journey. See you there!
What is your #1 emotional eating trigger?
Cheering you on as you courageously walk this path,
Claudia