When I was eating emotionally, I often felt like I was in a trance. Something had taken over my body and mind when I opened up the kitchen cabinet and grabbed handfuls of crackers or low-fat cookies.
Who knows how much I ate, why I was eating it, or even how the food tasted. I was pulled to the kitchen like it was a magnet.
It was only when my belly started to feel very uncomfortable that I woke up from this trance. And that’s when the shame and guilt came flooding in. “Oh $hit. What have I done?”
If I was feeling bad before I wanted to eat emotionally, I was feeling far, far worse after I finished. My body wasn’t just uncomfortable with too much food. Afterward, I wanted to hide my big overfilled body.
Emotional eating operates in a cycle. We have an unmet need; seek relief from this discomfort; turn to food to feel better temporarily by distracting, avoiding, or stuffing; feel regret, shame, and guilt; promise ourselves we will stop overeating in the future.
The result: We focus on trying to stop ourselves from overeating and our unmet needs, the reason we turned to food from the beginning, remains.
There are several ways to interrupt the emotional eating cycle. A cycle is challenging to interrupt because it becomes wired within us. The cycle begins and without any effort or thinking on our part, we make our way through each of the steps on autopilot.
This is why I felt like I was in a trance. I had been eating emotionally since I was 12. My body and mind knew what to do. It was familiar. Even if the familiar was painful.
As I was breaking this pattern, there is one tool that was pivotal for me and has since been extremely helpful to my clients. I call this tool The Pause.
There is magic to this tool. Not in its complexity or because a level of sophisticated mastery is required to use it. The magic lies when we remember to use it.
Before I share how to practice The Pause, it’s important to be clear about why you’re using this tool. Of course, you want to STOP yourself from eating emotionally. But that’s not why this tool is so powerful. The Pause is used to break the cycle and to wake yourself up from the emotional eating trance.
It starts with that FIRST moment you notice your desire to eat when you’re not physically hungry. You may have already started to eat and recognize that it’s not your body that’s eager for food.
Consciously be willing to practice The Pause. Say to yourself, “I’m going to pause right now.”
Set a timer for 20 minutes. Depending on your comfort level, 5 or 10 minutes may feel better.
Let yourself know that at the end of the timer, you’re going to give yourself three choices:
To not eat and do something else.
To eat, without guilt or restriction.
To set the timer again.
Set the food aside. Do something else.
Repeat. Repeat each of these steps until the cycle has been interrupted.
Acknowledge yourself and the courage and awareness you had to make this change, no matter how small it was.
When you’re in The Pause, consider asking yourself some questions like “What would make me feel better than I do right now?” or “What are my body and mind asking for?”. By doing this, you’re starting to explore why you wanted to eat in the first place.
The MOST critical step in The Pause is permitting yourself to eat (see step 4b). Remember, you’re drawn to food to soothe the discomfort you’re feeling. You may not know what that discomfort is or how it got there, but there is a part of you that needs relief.
You need to let yourself know that food is there if you choose to eat it. If you don’t allow yourself to eat emotionally through The Pause, you may notice that you are unwilling to practice The Pause in the first place.
I invite you to practice The Pause with curiosity and playfulness. This isn’t something to force yourself to do.
Take it lightly. Remember, the magic is in remembering.