Here is a story about “Jo”. Jo has been struggling with emotional eating for a long, long time.
The negotiation began before Jo even opened her eyes. She lay in bed, remembering the night before. Oh, who was she kidding? It wasn’t just last night. The whole freakin’ day was a shit show.
It started with a few cookies at lunch and the rest was history. She ate and ate well into the evening. Constantly grazing on whatever she could find. And now, she had to fix this.
Jo told herself that today would be better. The sun was shining and she’d have a better day with food.
Jo made a plan:
No sugar. She would throw the cookies in the trash and melt the ice cream down the sink.
3 meals a day, including a smoothie at breakfast and a salad at lunch.
Snacks of nuts and raw veggies.
Jo felt hopeful. Even a bit optimistic. With an extra long workout in her basement, maybe she could mitigate the damage of the extra calories from the day before.
The day started beautifully. Smoothie ✓. Handful of almonds ✓. Salad ✓.
Then Jo started to feel unsettled around 3ish. She had a hard time sitting still and was getting anxious about a deadline she didn’t think she could meet.
So much for best laid plans. She made her way to the food pantry and found peanut butter and stale graham crackers from last summer’s camping trip.
Before she knew it, it was Groundhog Day. Different day, same shit show.
Despite her best efforts and doing everything she thought she was supposed to do, Jo was still eating emotionally.
If you can relate, I need to point out something REALLY important that you may not be aware of.
Jo was trying to diet her way out of emotional eating.
She was trying to stop eating emotionally by limiting what kinds of foods she ate, how much she ate and when she ate.
It’s a very common approach and advice that’s often given by some “experts” around emotional eating. They tell you to fear sweets, carbs and all of the forbidden food that you’re drawn to. They tell you to replace cookies with kale and potato chips with avocados.
However, this common approach doesn’t work. If it did, Jo wouldn’t be struggling with emotional eating. And neither would you.
This approach NEVER allows you to become 100% free of emotional eating. It just leads you back into the diet trap.
Trying to diet your way out of emotional eating makes food and your body the enemy. Fight sugar, fight carbs. Stop eating so many calories. Punish your body with cruel words and challenging workouts that will blast those extra calories.
Uggh. And, instead of getting to the bottom of what made Jo anxious and unsettled in the first place, she feels horrible about herself for feeling so out of control around food. She focuses on what she's eating instead of what’s really happening on the inside.
If you can relate, and you’d like to know how to soothe your emotions with eating emotionally, I’d like to invite you to Hungry for Peace, a 5 day online experience that’s beginning on April 27th.