Put an end to your emotional eating cycles and finally lose weight by recognizing it’s not about the food
Have you found yourself in the pantry, stressed out and eating Oreos, chips, or whatever you can get your hands on? Emotional eating is one of the most common coping mechanisms. However, just because you’re an emotional eater doesn’t mean that you can’t lose weight or can’t break the habit! It just means you need to learn more about yourself so that you can break that cycle! The first thing emotional eaters need to learn is that it’s not really about the food.
I used to be an emotional eater.
My son was born with a lot of health problems. He had to have a few surgeries as a baby and it took a toll on me. Any time I felt anxious, stressed, worried, sad, even relieved, I ate. I knew it wasn’t good for me but I couldn’t stop myself.
I also knew this wasn’t a habit I wanted to pass down to my kids, so I dived into learning about emotional eating, why we do it, and how to stop.
Emotional eating is about feelings, not food.
When I would emotionally eat, I would blame it on the food. The cookies sounded good. A neighbor brought over brownies so I had to eat them. The kids didn’t finish their food and I was too tired to make my own, so I just ate their leftover nuggets.
Food was always the scapegoat. I told myself that food was the problem. Cravings were my problem. Self-control was my problem.
But none of those were the problem. I always say, it’s about the food, but it’s not really about the food and this is so true when we’re talking about emotional eating.
Emotional eating doesn't start with a craving. It ends with it. Emotional eating starts with an emotion or feeling.
Feelings lead to actions. When you find yourself mindlessly eating, it’s not because you’re hungry it’s because you’re avoiding dealing with a feeling that you’re having.
I found that happening so much with my son. I didn’t want to face my fears so I would ignore them and head for the fridge.
Emotional eating is a way to cope or avoid the bigger problems in our lives. It soothes us. But when it’s all said and done emotional eating usually leaves us in a worse place than when we started.
Being able to recognize this and want to change it is a huge sign that you’re ready to tackle your emotional eating.
Learn your triggers - good and bad
Triggered is an overused word these days. While it can sound cliche, it’s actually very important to realize that everything is triggering. Nothing starts from nothing, right? Something has to spark the thought, feeling, or action. So yes, literally everything triggers us, but we need to understand what triggers us to take actions that serve us and what triggers us to take actions that hurt us.
During one of my Macros Made Easy Program calls, I was talking with a Mama who had fallen off track for a few weeks and then got back on track. I asked her these two questions:
What triggered you to get off track?
What triggered you to get back on track?
Answering both of these questions is vital to understanding our habits and tendencies.
What triggered you to get off track?
A lot of times we’re triggered to get off track because we don’t believe that we deserve the success or results we’re getting. It’s a classic case of self-sabotage. If you feel like this might be one of the reasons you’re triggered, go listen to episode 73 of The Unraveled Mama Podcast! I talk all about self-sabotage and how to stop it in that episode.
Heavy emotional events can also trigger us to fall back into old patterns. My son’s health triggered me to emotional eat. Maybe you experienced a death in the family, your workload increased, you or a family member were sick and you had to live outside of your normal schedule to care for them.
Another big trigger is comparison. Maybe you saw an old friend from high school who you thought looked better than you. Perhaps you compared yourself to an Instagram influencer who looked like she had everything together.
It’s important to pinpoint the thought, feelings and event that triggered you to get off track. When you start to recognize these triggers, you can begin to eliminate or heal them, which we’ll talk about more in a bit.
What triggered you to get back on track?
Just as important as understanding what took you off track is knowing what helped you get back on track.
Too often, we focus on the triggers that hurt us, but that kind of thinking can keep us stuck in a negative pattern. We need to notice and celebrate what helps us get back on track too!
The hard thing about positive triggers is that they don’t seem to just happen as the negative triggers do. You aren’t just going to wake up one day and realize you’re worthy of more. You have to put in the work to build those thoughts and beliefs about yourself.
The Macros Made Easy program includes mindset work and personal growth because, without it, you’ll end up giving in to your negative triggers without a way to find the positive ones! (Hint: this is probably why dieting has failed you in the past!)
When I was talking with that Mama who had fallen off track, and I asked her what helped her get back on track, she said that without me asking her these questions and taking the time to get out of the abstract and really look at her life she wouldn’t have figured it out.
She decided that she wasn’t going to let a problem or setback defeat her. She was bigger than that problem and worthy of more.
You have to practice finding these positive triggers. You have to take the time and do the work if you want to find them. You have to practice forgiveness and grace. You have to keep going and allow yourself to be human.
You’ll make mistakes, but you can get back up and try again.
How to work through your triggers faster
After almost eight years of working through my own emotional eating triggers, I’ve learned how to get through a trigger faster.
An emotional eating binge used to set me back for weeks! I would get overwhelmed, eat, feel guilty about eating, eat again, feel guilty again, and get stuck in that cycle for weeks.
But as I learned to recognize my cues, I could slow down, choose to eat or not eat (aka give into the emotions or deal with them) and then I’d only fall off the wagon for a few days.
Then it got to the point, where I’d choose not to give into the emotions and I’d work through what was really bothering me. Sometimes it took me a few days to figure it out, but that got faster too. Days turned into hours and hours turned into minutes. The more time I spent understanding myself, the less time it took me to deal with my emotions.
Unfortunately, understanding your emotions and triggers isn’t an all-or-nothing experience. It’s not like once you understand why you’re emotionally eating, you’ll just get over it and move on. You’ll still get those triggers but you’ll use your tools to slingshot you forward instead of falling backward.
I call this the rubber band process. When you get hit with a trigger it’s like pulling back on a rubber band. It creates tension. That tension has to be released, and you have the choice to slingshot yourself towards your goals, in a direction that will serve you. Or you can give into that resistance and choose to slingshot yourself in a direction that doesn’t serve you.
Sometimes we’re going to choose the wrong direction. That’s ok. But when you choose to work through an emotion you can slingshot yourself forward.
You can pass where you were previously and it’s a whole new level of growth you’ve achieved. Every time you get stuck in that rubberband you have the opportunity to get ahead.
Nothing that you want in life is going to be easy. That is true of your health, mental and physical, too. But you can work to remember that you’re worth more than you have right now. You have come so far and worked so hard and you deserve to be happy.
I can help you overcome emotional eating so that you can lose weight and live your best life. If you’ve tried all the diets and they have failed you, then it’s time to incorporate mindset work into your nutrition so that you can change how you think and feel about food. Schedule a free discovery call with me and we’ll link arms and put an end to your emotional eating cycle.
