How many times have you eaten a food when you were emotional, but did not actually feel hungry at the time?
How did you feel after eating?
The fad diet cycle and emotions are intertwined. When we are talking about coping with our emotions with kindness we are talking about combating those feelings of guilt or shame that arise in the fad diet cycle.
Redirect and reframe negative thoughts!
Cognitive flexibility is the ability for a person to view a situation, event, or thought from different perspectives. Typically, this means reframing automative negative thoughts into a more positive or realistic perspective.
- Identify the negative thought
- Regrame with three plausible AND positive alternatives
Normalize compensatory eating AKA when you haven’t had enough food or went too long without a meal!
Imagine you are surfing or going for a swim and you dive under the water. You have to hold your breath and sometimes longer than you would like.
You’d never hear someone say: “I’ve got loss of control breathing!” or “I am binge breathing.”
Eating is essential to live and function just as breathing is.
Emotional eating is a normal part of being human. It makes sense if we are using food as a coping mechanism. When you get to a point of becoming comfortable with Intuitive Eating you will still emotionally eat every now and then and that is OKAY! We just don’t want emotional eating to be our ONLY coping mechanism.
So how does emotional eating present itself?
- Comfort
- Distraction
- Sedation
- Punishment
1. Comfort
Just the thought of certain foods has the ability to evoke feelings from a comfortable time or place. Have you ever craved chicken soup when sick or macaroni and cheese on dreary days? Occasionally eating comfort foods can be a part of a healthy relationship with food, if you do it while staying in touch with your satiety levels and without guilt.
2. Distraction
If you go a little further on the continuum of eating. food can be used as a distraction from your feelings that you wish to not experience.
3. Sedation
A more serious form of using food to cope is eating for the purpose of numbing or wanting it to keep you from feeling for extended periods of time.
4. Punishment
When eating for the purpose of sedation can become frequent, self-blame can ensue and lead to self-punishing behaviors. This may lead to consuming large amounts of food and a loss of self-respect.
How can you tell if you’re hungry or emotional?
Am I biologically hungry?
If the answer is yes, then honor your hunger and eat something! If the answer is no, answer the following questions.
What am I feeling?
When you find yourself reaching for food when there is no biological hunger, take a time out and ask yourself why you are hungry.
If you can rule out hunger, then it is time to try and identify the emotions that you are feeling.
Common emotions that trigger emotional eating include:
- Fearful/Nervous
- Angry/Irritable
- Sad/Hopeless/Lonely
- Joyful/Happy/Satisfied
- Disgusted/Repulsed
- Frustrated/Enraged
- Stressed/Anxious
- Surprised/Shocked
- Ashamed/Disgraceful/Guilty
- Humiliated/Embarrassed
Notice the feelings you are experiencing. Which needs are met vs unmet?
What do you need?
- Distraction
- Support
- Deal directly with the feeling
- Self-care
Some examples of support, self-care, distractions and dealing include:
- Rest & relax
- Watch the sunset/sunrise
- Take a walk
- Swim or spend time in a sauna/jacuzzi
- Listen to music
- Find a new podcast to listen to
- Breathing exercises
- Learn to meditate
- Pick up a new hobby
- Bubble bath
- Play with your dog/cat
- Develop a network of friends
- Ask for help from friends
- Buy fresh flowers
- Act of self-care for yourself
- Gardening
- Puzzling
- Scheduling naps
- Yoga
You are building your intuitive eating tool box!
The tools of IE are internal cues, not outside forces telling you what, when, and how much to eat.
If you enjoyed this blog post make sure you check out our post “Intuitive Eating Principle #6: Feel Your Fullness” here!
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