Emotional Reflection: An Essential Component to Managing Food Cravings

Allowing time and energy to reflect on the messages from your emotions begins to create more emotional awareness and freedom from emotional eating. Emotional eating is most often driven by uncomfortable emotions and an attempt to avoid or suppress them. When you find that you are in a space of avoidance and have learned to practice the Pause (check out the previous blog) as a method to begin to make peace with food, you can shift into a space of internal reflection.

When you Reflect on your emotions, you open yourself to a powerful recognition of your internal world, your experience of—and response to—your life. For many, the shadow side, or darker side of the emotional world can be frightening. Uncomfortable emotions are often viewed as “bad” and you may fear that you will get stuck in those uncomfortable emotions. It limits your ability to fully know yourself and live in a truly present manner in life without awareness of all of your emotions.

Emotions are important information about your experience of the present moment. They show up as a response to your experiences and are essential to understanding yourself and the depths of your being. While the fear exists that you may get “stuck” in an uncomfortable emotional space, the opposite is actually the truth. When you are experiencing an uncomfortable emotion, it is for a reason.

When you take time to Reflect on your emotions and connect with and understand the why behind them, you can make a choice as to how to respond. If you get stuck in a space of avoidance, you perpetuate the discomfort, and this leads to the desire to continuously numb, whether with food, alcohol, distraction, projecting your discomfort onto others or otherwise.

When you numb consistently, this creates the feeling of being stuck as you never connect with the original emotions and do not allow yourself the opportunity to derive the information your emotions will offer you. This creates essentially a backlog of old, uncomfortable emotions which can be overwhelming and painful.

Becoming comfortable Reflecting on your emotions begins with mindfulness. When you become mindfully engaged with the present moment you can learn to witness your emotions. In the space of the witness, you become a silent observer of your emotions, so rather than being the feeler of your feelings, you are the observer of them.

The internal witness, or silent observer perspective creates an opening to awareness. From the space of awareness you have an opportunity to make a choice. The intention of becoming a witness is not to escape, but to understand and create comfort internally with whatever is true for you in this moment.

You are not tuning into the internal witness in order to not feel your feelings. The opposite is true. You tune into the internal witness to become more and more comfortable with feeling your feelings. This process offers a supportive internal space and creates an opportunity to react to your emotions in a healthy way.

When you witness and Reflect on your emotions, you become deeply aware of them and derive the information they provide you. During the process of Reflection you might choose to just be with your emotion, or you might choose to do something proactive with it, such as write the emotion down. You might choose to call a friend or share it with a loved one. You can take time to ponder the emotion and journal about what it feels like internally to have this emotion. You can journal about why it is there and what information the emotion is trying to communicate with you.

Once you are in touch with the why behind the emotion, you can make a choice on how to respond. Is anger there because you are not ok with the way someone spoke to you or treated you? Can you tell them? Can you journal about it? If you are anxious, do you have too much on your to-do list? Are there too many pressures in your life at this time? What can you do about that?

If you are lonely, can you reach out to someone you care about? Can you connect with a friend, loved one or neighbor? If you are happy, why? What is offering you this internal experience right now? How can you savor it without clinging to it?

Making a choice about how to respond to your emotions creates action, and action naturally moves you forward. When you move forward you are building emotional awareness leading to acceptance, and a deeper inner wisdom. Learning to not judge your emotions, but to be aware will move you further forward on your journey to making peace with food.

The next time you find yourself in a space of mindless eating, stress eating, emotional eating, or numbing your internal experience of your emotions in any way, first offer yourself the time to Pause. Once you have given yourself the needed time within the Pause, move into this powerful phase of emotional Reflection. In this space where you are Reflecting on your emotions, there is no room for judgement, just awareness. Once you know the why, you can choose how to respond to the emotion, creating a sense of empowerment, confidence and Inner Strength.

Feeling empowered, emotionally aware, confident and strong is how most of us want to feel. Try building your emotional awareness with mindful Reflection and notice the impact. As you begin to incorporate these elements, let me know how they work for you!

How to Pause and Listen to Your Body: Integrating Mindful and Intuitive Eating

Learning to pause and listen to your body is one of the most profound ways to heal your relationship with food. Connecting with the present moment by being mindful and intuitively aware of your body is healing. We often spend a good bit of time lost in thought, mindlessly rushing from one aspect of the day to the next which often results in mindlessly eating.

When was the last time you found yourself looking in the cabinet and yet you weren’t really hungry or finishing a bag of chips and wondering how you got there in the first place? These things happen, and when you struggle with emotional and stress eating, it can become a mindless action used to avoid or suppress emotions and stress. When you engage in mindless eating to ease stress or numb out emotions it may lead to forming habit pattern of mindless eating.

This is where learning to Pause and check in with your body and mind can be such a powerful action to take along your path to making peace with food. When you Pause, you begin to engage with the present moment as it is right now. When you Pause, you are respecting your body, your needs and tuning into your intuition.

Within the space of the Pause, you create an opportunity to make a choice. This is where the power lies when you become mindfully engaged with the present moment. In the present moment you can check in with how stress or your emotions are impacting your mind, your body, your energy, your mood and your choices. When truly present, you can ask yourself how you want to feel and make choices based on this—rather than on avoidance and fear of feeling your feelings.

If you have been reading here for some time, you most likely already know the definition of mindfulness. However, I am going to repeat it, because it is so useful to have the reminder. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with nonjudgmental awareness. The non-judgment part is often one of the biggest challenges. Our minds judge by nature and create conditions that can feel pressured or uncomfortable.

When you engage with the Pause in the moment of a craving or when you catch yourself mindlessly eating or avoiding emotions and stress, you are essentially practicing mindfulness. When you use the moment of Pause and make a different choice based on how you want to feel, you are growing your mindfulness muscles (so to speak) to create more strength, awareness and comfort internally.

Now that you have allowed yourself to Pause, you can create and build self-awareness. Taking time to ask yourself, “What is happening right now?” “Why am I stressed?” “Why is this emotion I seem to want to avoid through food here in the first place?” “Is there another choice I can make in this moment?” These questions lead to self-awareness, growth and the opportunity to heal your relationship with food and with yourself.

When you allow yourself to be curious about your emotions and behaviors you create the perspective of non-judgment. You can be kind and compassionate to yourself, which will be far more tolerated internally than being mean and judgmental towards yourself! When you become overly judgmental towards yourself, you are more likely to emotionally eat, regress and feel shameful or like a failure. When you are kind to yourself you are more likely to grow, to push through the challenges and create the change you want.

Once you have examined the pause in a mindful manner, you have an opportunity to make a choice. What else can you do in this moment? Here you might opt to set a timer for 5 minutes and have a glass of water. You might choose to practice deep breathing or remove yourself from the kitchen, food item, cabinets, whatever is causing the mindless eating and cravings.

If you struggle with emotional eating, you may struggle to connect to your intuition. You may feel a sense of being disconnected from your body and your gut feelings. When you take the time to Pause, and examine the space within the pause, you will get back in touch and connect with your intuition and inner knowing.

When you Pause you can observe what is happening internally. Is there something your intuition is trying to communicate to you? Be curious and open to listening to your inner wisdom. Learn to become accepting of your emotions, internal experiences and inner guidance. Learn to listen and you might be surprise by what you “hear.”

Try this practice the next time you are experiencing a craving or you find that you are mindlessly eating/grazing/staring at the fridge: take time to Pause. As you Pause, look within and tune into your intuition. Ask yourself what you are truly needing and see if you can offer that to yourself within that very moment. Your body and mind are intimately interconnected and practicing this Pause will encourage and strengthen this internal connection.

How to Identify the Emotions Driving Your Food Cravings

When emotions are the driving force that cause your food cravings, it is vital to develop emotional awareness. If you have been avoiding emotions through emotional eating—or any other mindless form of numbing them out—this can feel like an overwhelming (and emotional) mountain to climb.

As humans, we tend to seek pleasure and avoid pain. While pleasure is an important part of life, generally, life cannot exist without both, and at times, this includes experiencing discomfort and pain. If you spend your life avoiding pain, you limit your ability to truly experience the pleasures in your life to their fullest.

While emotional eating can be triggered by any emotion, it is generally driven by a desire to avoid or numb out uncomfortable emotions. Discomfort is not experienced as pleasure and we tend to want it to just stop. Food can temporarily trigger the pleasure center in the brain causing a temporary suppression of the uncomfortable emotion. However, it does not just go away! It comes back, along with all of the other emotions you have been avoiding with food.

Learning to identify emotions and understand why you are experiencing them in the first place is essential. While it can feel daunting, knowing you have been avoiding the feelings for a reason, being able to create a more peaceful relationship with food, as well as with yourself is worth the effort. Know that this is a process, it takes time and indeed a good bit of effort. 

To get started, it is helpful to have a feelings/emotions journal. If you have no idea where to start with identifying, much less feeling your feelings, you can download a feelings wheel like this one here. Giving yourself dedicated time to building your emotional awareness muscle is important.

If you wanted to strengthen your biceps, you wouldn’t do just one bicep curl and expect to create the strength you desire and be done for life! You have to do many repetitions—and in order to maintain the strength you create, you must be consistent. You will most likely have to feel a little sore in order for growth to happen.

When you check in, you are identifying and exploring your emotions, this helps you build your emotional awareness muscles. You can continue to develop your emotional awareness by preparing yourself, having a plan, and committing to check in emotionally with yourself consistently.

Choose a time to give yourself space with your journal and emotions wheel and check in with how you are feeling right now. Ask yourself if there have been any emotions you experienced throughout the day today or even the day before that want to be recognized.

Once you acknowledge that a feeling is there, check in with how that particular emotion impacts your physical body. What’s occurring internally as you bring up or allow yourself to feel this emotion? Again, try not to judge your experience but witness it, be present with it, and if it’s uncomfortable try not to run from it—if it is comfortable, try not to cling to it.

Spend time observing this feeling and engage with it from the perspective of witnessing it. Become a silent observer of your emotions.

Now allow yourself to discover the why. Ask yourself, “why did I experience that emotion?” “What happened to create that specific emotion?” Try not to judge, just be curious. Name the feeling, observe it, and now understand the why. This is powerful information about your internal response to—and experience of your life. Emotions are valuable information about your experience of your life and allow you to make choices based on your internal experience.

Do you need to take action on the feeling? When you understand the why behind the feeling, you can decide if there is anything you need to do. If you are anxious, is there something you need to do? If you are angry, is there something you need to say? If you are bored, is there something constructive you could do? How can you take action in a way that is healthy and allows you to feel empowered and in control.

Now you have the opportunity to let it go! If you have allowed yourself to authentically feel your emotion, be non-judgmentally aware of it and derive the important information from it, you can make a choice about whether or not you need to take action. Now it is time to let it go. Releasing emotions comes with time and practice, practice and time.

Allow yourself to consistently show up for your emotions—all of your emotions—and you will find them to be less scary. Additionally, you will begin to feel more and more emotionally empowered. There are no “bad” feelings, just some that may be more comfortable than others, however, they are all vitally important to be aware of in order to make a choice about how to respond. Every emotion has a purpose and is a valuable element of being a human and of being alive.

As you begin to feel more comfortable experiencing your emotions, you can specifically apply these concepts and practices to eating. When you are experiencing a craving, you can ask yourself what you are actually hungry for in the moment. You may find more often than not, it is not actually food! Then you have an opportunity to make a choice.

You create the opportunity to make empowered decisions regarding how to respond to your emotions and how to choose the foods you truly want to eat—not because of an attempt to temporarily numb an emotion, but to enjoy the taste and experience of eating that particular food.

When you consistently practice emotional awareness, you will end the cycle of escaping your emotions with food. If you find you could benefit from support in this area, reach out, find support and begin to grow your emotional awareness. This creates an opportunity to make peace with food by making peace with yourself.