How to END Feeling DEPRIVED and START Feeling EMPOWERED by Your Food Choices

Have you recently set out on a wellness journey where you want to begin eating healthier to feel good, build energy and feel more comfortable in your body? The momentum often begins with feeling strong and empowered and you have determined your WHY! Then, you are inevitably thrown into a situation where you are around others eating the very foods you have chosen not to eat because they do not support your wellness journey to feel healthy. Even though you know those foods may leave you feeling miserable (you know, feeling bloated, have an upset stomach, they zap your energy, give you skin breakouts and experience brain fog or another obvious sign that these particular foods are JUST NO GOOD FOR YOU) and yet you now feel DEPRIVED.

When you have turned the corner from making a choice that certain foods just DO NOT serve you, and you clearly know this (uh, remember the above miserable symptoms?), it does not mean that it is easy to choose not to eat them and that you won’t feel deprived.

It takes time and effort to change our minds about those types of foods and to create the shift from feeling deprived. Just because you have made the decision to no longer eat those particular foods, that does not mean that you are not human. That does not mean that there will not be cravings. That does not mean that you won’t secretly be jealous or resentful of everyone else who seems to be eating these foods with no problem at all (at least, so it seems).

Learning to listen to your body is a journey and it is definitely not a straight-line kind of a journey. Nope, integrating mindful and intuitive eating principles into your life often comes with many twists and turns. I know this personally from my struggles with leaky gut and SIBO that there are some foods that my body really does not like. At. All. One for sure is cows milk—which sadly includes cheese. You know, like the super delicious cheddar cheese, muenster cheese, swiss cheese... I pretty much used to be pretty much a chees-a-tarian. Ahh, I do love cheese, it just does NOT love me back. Do you think I didn’t test this many, many times? Of course I did! But with time and practice I had to come to realize that feeling horrible is just not worth it! It took a long time to not feel deprived when I didn’t eat cheese and I wanted it. And there are still cravings, (which are usually more emotionally based) and I have had to practice awareness and managing those desires for comforting foods when I am stressed, tired and anxious, in other ways. 

So how do you release the feelings of being deprived when you choose NOT to eat something you want despite how it makes you feel? Just like any other feelings, you have to learn to be present with them, to accept them and to ensure yourself that you are NOT ACTUALLY deprived. You are making a choice based on your wellness goals, based on what your body needs to feel vital and healthy!

When you connect with your specific WHY driving your decision to eliminate a certain food from your meals it will help to shift how you feel about your choice. Reminding yourself of your personal WHY and ensuring you are NOT restricting foods, not basing this on actual deprivation (like a diet) in any other areas, will help you refocus. My personal mantra is, “eating that gooey cheese is not worth an upset stomach.” I worked way too hard to heal my gut, I do NOT want to destroy it again.

Deprivation mindset is not healthy. When you deprive yourself and restrict certain foods out of fear of taking in calories, fearing weight gain, or to punish yourself because of your own negative body image it will inevitably lead to either malnutrition or a binge. Restriction and dieting do NOT work long-term and will set you up for bigger struggles with food. Research shows that the majority of diets fail and DO NOT last for the long term!!! That is significant and eye opening. IF you make a choice about the food you eat based on how you want to feel, you can simplify your decision-making process.

When you make your decision based on how you want to feel you create an internal experience of empowerment, confidence and self-respect. When you make choices based on building these feelings, you create a powerful shift internally. You regain a sense of control and mastery over your choices and respect your feelings and choices. Experiencing true health and well-being is a reminder that you are making progress towards your personal wellness goals. It is a process and a practice which will take time, effort, determination and focus.

One way to decrease your feelings of deprivation is to create healthy or adapted version of the foods you love. Another way is to explore any emotional food cravings and explore how to get your emotional needs met in non-food ways. An example would be if you find you crave comfort foods when you are anxious and tend to use food to calm yourself down, try a deep breathing practice, journaling, movement or talking to someone you trust about your feelings. Notice the impact of using this non-food-based tool and continue to practice it.

Having regular self-care practice and becoming more comfortable with feeling your feelings will help you choose a different way to eat, to be and interact with food and will help you begin to shift from feeling deprived to feeling empowered! Start each day with asking yourself how you want to feel (mentally, emotionally, physically and energetically) and notice how that begins to impact your choices.

The next time you notice a sense of feeling deprived in relation to a choice you make related to food, check-in and ask yourself: what’s really going on? Why are you choosing NOT to eat that particular food? Continue to be certain that you are not restricting because of a thought that it is a “bad” or “off limits” food due to calories or fear, but because it is a food that does not serve your health and wellness goals.

Are there any foods that you are working to shift your perspective from feeling deprived to feeling confident, empowered and strong? Remember that healthy eating, intuitive eating and mindful eating are form of self-respect. Let me know how this process works for you!

If you haven’t signed up for my 7-Day Kick Your Food Cravings to Curb Challenge, you can do so here!

Understanding and Releasing Emotions Driving Your Emotional Cravings

Becoming emotionally aware is a process. If you have been avoiding uncomfortable emotions for a long time, it will take dedicated time and an internal commitment to healing to become emotionally aware. It is absolutely worth the hard work to get to the other side!

Imagine living in a space where you are not ruled by your emotions and you have the ability to make a choice on how to respond to them. Imagine not living in reactivity to—or avoidance of—your emotions. Imagine instead, living in a space of empowerment and confidence with yourself as well as with food.

When I first learned about mindfulness and how to connect to present moment awareness, it impacted me in a BIG way. I tend towards anxiety and have had several stress related health struggles. When I discovered how much of the anxiety I experienced was self-created due to my over-connection with my anxiety-provoking thoughts I was shocked. Up until this awareness, I believed that because I thought it, it must be, or at least could be true! 

Through mindfulness and the awareness of connecting to the present moment, I learned that I could choose to respond to thoughts and the emotions they create in a different way. When I began focusing on learning to become aware of my thoughts and if possible, change my thoughts (or at least change my response to my thoughts), my whole life changed for the better.

Delving deeper into the inner workings of my mind through mindfulness, I discovered that many of the emotions I was unconsciously avoiding were self-created from believing the negative thoughts. Yikes! There are some emotions that we experience that are caused by our own thoughts and other emotions caused by legitimate external circumstances. Being able to recognize the difference and make a choice on how to respond is where your power lies.

Within the process of becoming mindfully aware, you learn to work with the Pause when you find yourself attempting to distract yourself away from an emotion. You then can move into a space of Reflection: why is it there? In the space of Reflection you can begin to discern the difference: is the emotion self-created or not? Is the emotion a response to a thought or a true potential problem? Is there something you can do about this thought or emotion? Once you Reflect and discern the why behind and driving your emotional experience, you can make a choice about how to respond.

Your choice might be to take action, especially if the emotion has been created by an external influence. If the feeling is internally created by a negative thought pattern or if you have attempted to manage or cope with the feeling to no avail, you can choose to Release it, to let it go.

Letting the emotion go is such a powerful aspect of emotional awareness because it creates a deeper sense of self-control and self-respect. You get to choose. While this may feel difficult at first, it is a practice. When you mind attempts to focus on the emotion, you can have a grounding statement to say to yourself, such as “In this moment I choose to let this thought go.” Or you might visualize the thoughts and emotions as leaves floating down a river, or as clouds floating by in the sky.

When you Release an emotion, such as worry, you Release the discomfort this emotion creates internally. Worry can create an internal experience of increased heart rate, agitation, fear of what may go wrong with no supported evidence that it may actually happen. This state of mental discomfort can trigger further internal and physical discomfort such as muscular tension, nail biting and other physical harm.

These internal tensions created by the emotion can be linked to many other physical ailments including neck, shoulder and back pain, stomach upset, IBS, TMJ, difficulty sleeping, inability to concentrate and fatigue (just to name a few). The action of Releasing the emotion, which may seem simple but is definitely NOT easy, can completely shift your internal experience. The process of Releasing is a practice and takes time, effort and dedication to the practice.

The process of Releasing an emotion invites internal freedom like no other because YOU get to choose. When you are Releasing, you are not avoiding your feelings, and you are not just trying to cope with them—but you are allowing yourself to understand them and use them to enhance your life. Through emotional awareness and Releasing unfounded discomfort, you build Inner Strength, confidence and empowerment.

This nonjudgmental approach creates freedom as you can choose your thoughts, and therefore choose how to respond to them. This freedom and awareness inevitably creates more acceptance of emotions, self-compassion and self-awareness.

As you continue to practice the three steps to managing emotional food cravings, Pause, Reflect, Release, you will find how this formula can enhance many areas of your life. When you begin to practice, let me know how it works for you! I’d love to hear your experience and I am here to support you along your path to healing, self-acceptance and self-compassion.

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!