Healing Emotional Eating With Mindfulness

Mindfulness is something of a buzzword these days. When concepts, words or disciplines become buzzwords they can lose their true meaning and power. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness. When you are practicing mindfulness you do not judge the present moment, you experience it. When you are living mindfully, each moment of life as it is experienced just as it is unfolding in the here and the now. The ability to stay present invites you to experience your life in a meaningful way, where you are not simply responding to past experiences and stress or future worries. Engaging with the present moment is experiencing what is true right now.

When you are able to experience what is true right now you are able to acknowledge, feel and accept your emotions. The act of being mindful—of being completely engaged in the present moment—offers the opportunity to no longer act or respond to life out of your unconscious mental and emotional programming. When you step away from acting out of autopilot mode, you can begin to make conscious choices about how to live your life right now. When you are able to both be aware of your emotions and make a conscious choice, emotional eating becomes less overbearing and more within your conscious control.

While mindfulness may seem like a simple concept, it is definitely not an easy practice. While there are helpful apps, classes and books you can use to learn and practice mindfulness, having quiet time to be present and reflect on your experience of the present moment is where your power lies. The power is in the practice, not it in the learning about and studying the practice itself.

When you can experience your rich internal emotional world without hesitation or attempt to flee from any emotional distress or discomfort, your self-awareness grows. Through a consistent mindfulness practice, your ability to make a choice in the present moment is enhanced. When you practice mindfulness in a disciplined manner, over time, you free yourself from the binds of emotional eating. While this progression may sound simple, or too good to be true, remember that it requires these two elements that allow it to be integrated, over time, into your life: dedication and self-discipline.

When you bring the element of dedication to the practice of mindfulness you can offer yourself time daily to pause, reflect and release any emotions that are triggering your emotional eating. (You can read more about creating this personalized plan from a previous blog on this process here.) The importance of self-discipline is all about showing up for the practice, showing up for yourself and your emotions for the long-term. When you are fully conscious of your emotions, they become less uncomfortable and more of a message about your experience of your life. When you are more deeply connected to your internal emotional world, you can respond in an empowered way to your emotions and therefore not run from them, not attempt to escape them with food—or anything else that only serves to numb out your emotions.

To establish a mindfulness practice, it is best to start with one minute and then build from there. One minute of attempting to witness your emotions, thoughts, body sensations and external environment can feel like a really long time when you first begin the practice! After two to five days, increase to two minutes. Over time you may find that ten minutes feels really great! I recommend spending some time in reflection following the practice whether through journaling or simply acknowledging what the experience was like for you. I also recommend logging the minutes and making some simple notes about how you felt before and after the practice and any emotions or thoughts that arose, just to notice, not to judge.

As you apply this practice to food, eating, and further into your life, you will see how showing up for yourself in this way is empowering and freeing. You will see how allowing yourself to experience your emotions offers you valuable and deeply meaningful information about your experience of your life. Being mindful and emotionally aware allows you to make a choice about how to respond. Over time, food becomes less of a coping tool and more of a space where you can derive nourishment and pleasure. When you begin to integrate a consistent mindfulness practice into your life you open the opportunity to truly make peace with food.

I Just Discovered I'm An Emotional Eater, Now What?

Have you tried every single crazy diet and dietary theory, (like keto-paleo-vegan) every exercise program, every supplement and pill or any other random thing that offers a promise of losing weight? Did you have some success initially only to regain the weight? Chances are, you might be an emotional eater. If this seems to resonate with you and yet you want to stop reading, I don’t blame you! This can be tough to acknowledge because food has been a consistent emotional suppressant and stress management system for you. Just having this realization in and of itself can be super scary. It’s even scarier to know where to begin to change this most likely deeply entrenched habit. If you feel overwhelmed by taking the steps to begin to do something about it, you are definitely not alone. 

Emotional eating is a major struggle for tens of thousands of people. The diet industry preys on people who are desperate to lose weight and makes their specific diet plan seem easy, healthy and like it’s the only way. They often make us feel as though we don’t have the discipline to do it alone, so we need their plan to lose weight and then equate the feeling or experience of “being thin” to happiness. Restricting food, not eating enough calories and possibly not receiving enough valuable nutrients that your body needs to function effectively sets you up for “cheat days” binge eating, being mentally and emotionally preoccupied by food obsessions, low energy and low motivation. While all of this is reason alone to question diets, their promises and systems—no matter what they promise and/or deliver—none of them address the root cause of weight gain in the first place: emotional eating.

If you have been an emotional eater for a long time, you may have begun to see your own patterns and how there is something missing. If you are just beginning to acknowledge that you are indeed an emotional eater or stress eater, there is good news. This is where you can begin to heal because awareness is the first step. You can start feeling hopeful when you are no longer sinking into a space of avoidance and denial, or spending more money on another book, pill or plan only to be disappointed over and over again. With awareness as the first step, acknowledging that the process is not a quick fix is the second. Reinventing your relationship with food, your emotions and yourself is possible and it requires time, dedication, consistency and effort.

The biggest difference here is that as you begin to work towards healing the root cause of the weight you wish to no longer carry, awareness alone does not cause the weight does not just pour off! Usually the process takes much longer than a crazy crash diet as there are many layers and steps to working through emotions. The work requires developing new ways to manage emotions, developing new routines, thought patterns and alleviating negative cognitions you may experience about yourself that seem to keep you feeling stuck. These negative beliefs may feel like, “I have to be perfect” “I will fail,” “I’ve tried to change before and it didn’t work,” “what’s the point,” “I’m too lazy,” “I’m not good enough,” “my body fights me,” and so on. These negative beliefs often run deep and are perpetuated by thoughts which will significantly impact actions, behaviors and choices. Not to mention that through the healing process it is helpful to address nutritional imbalances within your body, metabolic function, blood sugar balance and body image. It can be overwhelming because it is indeed a ton of work.

Once you make this choice that tackling emotional eating is the change you want, there are two concepts that are essential to come to terms with as you begin. The first is that you need to believe in your ability to create the changes you desire in your life. The second is that you are willing to commit to creating the change you desire. Once you fully integrate these two concepts, you will be well on your way. This is where you can address the challenges, blocks, negative thoughts and feelings. There will be resistance, but that’s ok, through the change process you will build resilience. There will be back-sliding, but that’s ok, there is nothing you will ever create for yourself that is truly meaningful and long-lasting that doesn’t have a learning curve and opportunities to grow into becoming your best self. It all starts with the decision to change, the desire to know and understand your internal emotional world and to befriend your mind and body. Once you create the belief and dedication, you then take it one day at a time.

While the process can be overwhelming and seem like a major task, breaking it down into doable, practical and meaningful steps will begin to propel you forward. As you begin to shift your mindset and work from a space of focusing on what’s going well rather than whether or not you are perfect, you will make progress. As you make progress you will see the internal shifts happening slowly and steadily. When you turn the focus away from losing weight and towards healing your relationship with food, your body and yourself, you will remain motivated to create the lasting change you desire. Often with diets there is a promise of losing weight fast. However, when addressing emotional eating, it will not be a fast journey. This is a steady, action focused journey where you begin to create your own personalized dietary plan. You create the movement in your life that is pleasurable. You create opportunities for self-reflection and emotional awareness to learn and grow. You are in charge of what makes your body feel energized, healthy and vital. You know what’s best and you will develop trust in your body and ability to change—and keep changing.

If this feels new, strange or something you have not considered or if you have known you are an emotional eater for a long time but avoided facing it due to fear or denial, now is the time to step into your personal power. It’s time to reclaim your health and wellness in mind, body and spirit. It is time to begin your personal journey towards making peace with food.

If you find you could benefit from support along the way, reach out, there is no need for you to go through this process all alone. Whether you reach out to me, another coach, therapist or best friend, find your team that will support your growth, change and will encourage you to create a life you love.

Grocery Store Survival 101: 5 Strategies to Stick to Your List

The grocery store can be one of the biggest hurdles to staying consistent along your path to healing your relationship with food. The grocery store bombards us with messages about how great we will feel and how much fun we will have when we down those sodas or eat those cookies. The truth is (aside from these items barely even qualify as FOOD) that the grocery store is a major feat to be conquered when embarking on a wellness journey.

I have put together a survival guide with five tactics to help you remain focused, to not give in to your Deal Maker and to create an opportunity for the grocery store to be a place where you can grow your Inner Strength! If you are not familiar with the concept of the Deal Maker—it’s that part of yourself that attempts to sabotage your progress. The Deal Maker is always try to make a deal to keep you stuck because it is very fearful of change. One of places the Deal Maker loves to show up and cause trouble is the grocery store! Your Inner Strength is the part of yourself that you are working to build, to grow and to continue to empower.

What are some of the most common examples your Deal Maker uses at the grocery store? Here’s a few examples:

            “You will only eat just one—every once in a while”

            “You have a hard week coming up, you DESERVE a treat”

            “So-and-so really would enjoy this______________, you can get it for them”

            “Just this once…”

Any of these sound familiar? The grocery store is hands down the most difficult element to wrangle because the food industry pays good money for product placement, advertising, graphic design and they appeal directly to the part of you that takes over with Deal Maker based thoughts.

Here are some tried and true tactics to tackle grocery shopping like a champ! 

1.    Never ever ever go to the grocery store when you are hungry.

I think this strategy speaks for itself, but I will elaborate a bit. When you enter the grocery store hungry you are way more likely to give into Deal Maker thoughts, to over spend and to purchase foods that you do not have on your list. To ensure success at the grocery store be sure to have a snack before hand to avoid any excessive hunger.

2.    Pre-plan what you will eat for the week and create a specific, detailed list for your shopping trip.

I know you most likely always have list when you go shopping—so that is not the main challenge! It is sticking to your list that takes effort when you are confronted with all the choices at the store. When you are armed with your list and have specific ingredients for specific meals, you create a better chance of actually sticking to your list.

3.    Practice visualization before you step foot in the store.

This is a such a helpful practice, it is also referred to as “cognitive rehearsal” and has been shown to help stick to your choices because you have practiced what you will do mentally or essentially “rehearsed” it before shopping.

Here’s how you do it: first, plan what you will need for your meals and write out your list, be as specific as possible. Then close your eyes, take a couple of deep breaths and visualize yourself at the grocery store with your empty cart. Picture yourself only placing the items on your list into your cart. Picture yourself passing by any “tempting” foods that you do not want to buy, notice how it feels to pass those by… Picture yourself in the check-out line, only purchasing the items on your list, notice how that feels. Picture yourself at home putting away the groceries—only the one’s from your list, notice how that feels. Take another deep breath and go to the store. Once you arrive at the store, if possible, practice the exercise again. This is a super effective tool to as it engages mindset and your emotional world. By practicing mentally first, you get to feel the positive feelings of sticking to your list and how empowering it is to feel in control of your choices.

4.    Shop the perimeter of the store.

The interior of the store is often where all of the packaged, processed, devoid of nutrients foods live. When you shop the perimeter, you are shopping for perishable foods which are fresh and therefore offer more nutrients. If you don’t come into contact with certain foods you are less likely to circumvent your plans and your grocery list. If you do have to go into the interior for some particular product, practice your visualization exercise first!

5.    Use technology to your advantage!

Nowadays there are so many helpful advances to grocery shopping, from Instacart to free delivery to curbside pickup, these options are super helpful and convenient! If you avoid having to even step foot into the store you avoid the possibility of being tempted by any triggering foods. I personally have enjoyed having groceries delivered. I have found that this not only forces me to have a plan, it also helps me save money on temptations at the store in the form of “sales” or other foods that look tasty but really I just don’t need.

I hope these strategies make your grocery-shopping and decision-making process related to food a little more simple. What strategy on the list will you try? Let me know! I’d love to hear if these are helpful for you!