Someone asked me the other day how you know if you’re an emotional eater? What a great question!

I didn’t know when I first started using food as a way to calm my anxiety and stress as a child what it was called. I just knew that when I ate, I felt a bit calmer. Food took the edge off whatever was going on at the time.

As quickly as it helped me numb my feelings, I always ended up feeling guilty, horrible about myself and worried about putting more weight on. To make matters worse, the more I ate the more I wanted to eat and the worse I felt emotionally and physically.

I knew that sitting on the floor sobbing because I couldn’t stop eating wasn’t what I wanted to do and yet, I didn’t know what else to do. Up until a few years ago, I turned to food for as long as I could remember:

for safety and support
to stop feeling my feelings,
to have some fun and celebrate,
to think my way through a problem
to be rebellious and reckless,
when loneliness filled my heart,
when conflict seemed to highjack my mind,
when someone hurt my feelings
when I worried about my weight (which was all the time)

I was the epitome of an emotional eater!

Food is Emotional

I’m not suggesting that food isn’t emotional! We love celebrations and food is always a big part of them! We break bread together – at weddings, funerals, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, when good friends gather!

We celebrate our heritage with food – what would the holiday be without Grandma’s special dish or shortbread cookies that melt in your mouth?

When emotional eating isn’t an issue, food at all the celebrations we love to attend, isn’t an issue either. We don’t worry for days before about whether we’ll be able to stop eating Christmas cookies or not. We don’t spend valuable bandwidth calculating how many points/macros/calories we’ve eaten and how many minutes/hours/days we’ll need to hit the gym to work it all off! We don’t wake up in the morning feeling anxious because we’ve had a binge the night before or dread going to a celebration because we know we’re going to binge!

No, food should be easy, fun, enjoyable. It doesn’t need to be complicated or come with heavy baggage attached to it.

Have you ever wondered how people with zero food issues manage to eat too much (think Christmas/Holiday Dinner) and feel like a beached whale but somehow manage to go on with their lives without plotting a calorie revenge?

It took me years to understand that feeling out of control with food really had nothing to do with food. (There is one situation in which it does have something to do with food and that is when your blood sugar is wonky and needs to be balanced and calibrated. This issue is for another post!)

Emotional eating is about what’s going on behind the scenes, what’s driving you into the fridge or cupboard. If you’re an emotional eater, your main solution to feeling better and/or avoiding what’s happening, is to turn to food as your sole source of comfort and safety.

Unravel Your Stories — **Unravelling your stories...**

I’ve created many stories about food and my body along the way! Some of them are true, some a mix of truth and fiction, and some I’ve been able to drill craters through!

1. How many times have you compared your body to someone else’s and believed you either take up too much space, or you’re not enough?

Unravel this story by recognizing that you are unique – there is no one like you! Even though this sounds cliché, it’s true. When you compare yourself to someone else, you give away your power! You minimize who you are and end up fighting with food and your body all over again. Remind yourself that there will always be someone smaller or larger than you, taller or shorter, richer or poorer, more outgoing or introverted. Stay in your own lane and work on becoming the best version of you – not someone else!

2. How often have you felt successful, more creative, sexy, ready to take on the world when you’re losing weight? Stepping on the scale and seeing the numbers go down means that you’re closer to joining an elite club of people you believe are successful and powerful and whose self-worth is based upon external measures.

And then again, how often have you felt defeated, lost your confidence, and gone back to believing you “can’t” because you’ve fallen off the diet wagon, again? Winning becomes a distant memory and “failure” takes you away from joining the club you so desperately want to be a part of.

Unravel these stories to see how competition and its limitations keep us small, unempowered, and dependent upon the myth that we are “better or lesser than” someone else. When we unravel the idea that our weight is about wins and losses, we discover life’s shades of grey and the beauty of diversity. We get to dismantle the myth that life is only “black or white”, or that we are either “good” or “bad” depending upon whether we’ve been able to stick to a diet plan or not.

When we unravel our stories about “success” or “failure” we realize how we’ve been taken away from learning about our strengths, gifts, and inner resources. We stop measuring ourselves against external criteria that keeps us believing our weight and worth are games to be played with. Your body, mind and soul deserve so much more than a label of success or failure.

3. For many years, I avoided taking care of my health and didn’t see my body as an asset that needed to be nurtured, loved and cared for with love. I bought into all the things that promised me results without effort or self-responsibility.

The stories I was told and the ones I accepted as gospel truth, were the ones that kept me running away from myself by using food to comfort me. I sprinted away from those parts that needed healing and love. I avoided all that I needed to face, certain that if I could only stick to the diet, I’d be fine.

Breathe — ***Unravel the story that keeps you avoiding what needs to be uncovered. Unravel the fear that stops you from leaning in, gathering your inner child in your arms, and calming your body.***

You cannot become safe and secure in your body and create a healthy relationship with food if you run away from the very person you need to depend upon – you.

The work I do around emotional eating is about helping you figure out how to navigate the space between what we have been led to believe about success and failure, good and bad, all or nothing, black and white.

What if your truth is in the middle, that space in-between?

Imagine becoming the woman who reconnects with her body’s truth, who has agency and choice around food, exercise, and the way she lives her life?

Imagine becoming the woman who works through her dark moments, trusts her intuition, and knows that a peaceful relationship with food is within her grasp!

Imagine…

Love and warm wishes,

Joan