Breaking the Habit of Comfort Eating
Are you an emotional eater? Do the pounds pile on when stresses pile up? Do you crave certain foods when you get the blues? Don’t worry – there is hope! No matter what your current eating habits, they probably helped you cope and survive childhood stresses. Be gentle with yourself - old habits take time to change:
-
Notice the foods you habitually crave and trace your earliest memories associated with them
-
Sometimes the foods you crave were forbidden or limited in childhood. This can create a desire to overeat foods that are bad for you
-
Notice what feelings trigger you to overeat –are they negative like emptiness or powerlessness, or positive like celebrations.
-
Often food addictions can be compensation for unmet emotional needs from childhood such as attention or approval.
-
Food addictions can also be used to numb out feelings of pain. Numbing pain blocks healing. You need to feel it to heal it.
-
Comfort eating often starts in infancy, if babies are always fed when they cry
-
To stop emotional eating, you have to find other ways to deal with emotional upsets, e.g. debriefing about upsets with someone, keeping a daily journal, watching comedies so you can laugh, allowing yourself to cry when you need to are some of the ways to release feelings safely.
-
It is important to treasure and love yourself regardless of your weight. Self hatred makes it harder to lose weight.
-
To lose weight, make a body care plan and emotional care plan. Make sure you have enough sleep, healthy food and exercise for your body, and enough self time, comfort, pleasure, closeness and fun to get more of your emotional needs met
COMPLIMENTS OF GRACE GERRY www.gracefulsolutions.ca
