Emotional Eating Isn't The Worst Thing

If you are a human reading this, you have probably succumbed to emotional eating before. Most of the time, we do this unconsciously. But before we get too deep into this conversation, I wanted to add that if do find yourself eating your feelings, that is okay! We are human. We have feelings and the emotions that feel icky to us tend to get stuffed down because humans are adverse to pain. We do anything to get out of feeling discomfort.

Some of us use alcohol, social media, drugs, sex, or online shopping to suppress what we are feeling. Emotional eating has such a stigma attached to it because of diet culture. When we struggle with food we are viewed as week or undisciplined. This is not true. There are worse things that humans use to cope with uncomfortable emotions. If you cope with doritos, cool. At least it isn't heroin.

Emotional eating only becomes a problem when you find that you are constantly suppressing emotions instead of feeling them. The more we stuff these emotions down, the worse we become. You might start noticing chronic pain, jaw clenching, anxiety attacks, depression, or fatigue.

The first thing you need to be aware of is when we are reaching for food when we aren't hungry. Pause.

Tune into what you are feeling in this moment.

Is your chest tight?

Jaw clenched?

Shoulders shrugged up to your ears?

Emotions always present physical symptoms.

Locate it in your body.

Ask yourself what is this sensation telling me?

Let your body answer for you.

Once you have determined what you are feeling, it is time to move it out of you.

Emotions are energy in motion and they become trapped in our bodies when we continue to suppress them.

You can move these emotions out through:

Breathe

Movement

Sound

This is why breathing through pain, labor, or anxiety helps.

This is why movement like punching a pillow, dancing or going for a walk feel therapeutic.

This is why crying, screaming, laughing, and singing feel like an emotional release.

Think about the last time you had an earth shattering orgasm when the kids weren't home. I bet it was way more sensational knowing that you didn't have to keep quiet.

If you haven't already, you can head to the freebie section of my website to snag your 5 Day Mini Course to Overcome Emotional Eating.