If you have read enough of my posts already, you know I don’t believe in diets, I don’t believe in letting food choices stress you out, and I don’t think cravings are demons within that we need to destroy – but instead cravings are wonderful little messages/guides that can lead us to eating what we need.
I also don’t believe that its helpful to hold ourselves to impossibly high health standards.
I argue in defense of sugar, fat, dairy, midnight snacks and more to come, in order to help people stop fearing food and start eating it.
Stop restricting and start nourishing.
So what about this little thing called Emotional Eating?
I argue that the majority of disordered eating is rooted in restriction, but sometimes, people just eat to numb out and stop feeling.
And here we get into the emotional and the spiritual side of eating.
The way we eat can reveal to us what we believe about Life. Are we afraid there is not enough? Are we constantly afraid to eat too much? Constantly restricting? Constantly guilty. Constantly hungry?
How to Address Emotional Eating
If you find yourself eating in response to sad or stressful situations instead of pure hunger, as many people do, you are afraid of your pain.
We are afraid that the anger we have will consume us. We are afraid that the fear we have will destroy us. We are afraid that the sadness we squelch will debilitate us. Yes it is scary, but we are wrong. It cannot destroy us. Pain is just pain. Our avoidance and resistance to the pain is far worse than actually just feeling it.
And the solution is simple, transformative, and not nearly as difficult as it seems: Feel.
“Whatever you accept fully, will complete itself, and disappear” – Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work.
You can always still eat after – or during. But make a contract with yourself to start feeling.
Simply feel the sensation of your pain. Label it. Accept it, welcome it, and be curious about it.
And when you feel it, accept it and welcome it non-judgmentally, it really does lose it’s power. It becomes just a thing- not a horror.
Then you can go eat whatever you want, not because you are avoiding your life and your feelings, but because you are damn hungry.
