Guest Post: 7 Things I Wish I Knew When I Found Out I Was An Emotional Eater

Guest post is coming from Anna today – enjoy!

I’ve learned seven essential and inspirational lessons during my 25 year battle with habitual overeating.

I started emotional eating when I was about 13 years old, and possibly even younger. At that time, I was facing situations in my home life that I wasn’t able to cope with…so, rather than deal with them in a healthy way, I did what seemed natural.

I stuffed the feelings down and ate junk food so that I wouldn’t have to feel the negative feelings of shame, guilt, sadness, frustration, helplessness, and anger.

It started with cookies, chips, and soda. And over time, I eventually would overeat whatever happened to be around. I would eat until I literally couldn’t take one more bite.

In the beginning, I wished that I could be one of those girls I had heard about on TV who would throw up after they overate. I even wished that I could be anorexic…because at least those girls were skinny.

I even experimented with purging after a binge…I remember taking my toothbrush and trying to shove it down my throat…I gagged a little, although nothing really happened. I remember feeling disappointed,..”You can’t even throw up right,” I said to myself.

I gave up on purging and just dealt with having a stomach full of food. 

At the same time when I started emotional overeating, I also started yo-yo dieting. The first diet I tried was the Beverly Hills Diet, where you eat fruit (like pineapple) for the first 10 days, followed by bread, butter, and corn on the cob for the next 9 days, and then on Day 19, you can finally have steak and lobster. 

I don’t think I successfully made it past Day 3 before having a bingeing episode.

So, from the time I was 13 until well into my 30’s I would go through this cycle:

On Monday I would start a new diet, by Wednesday or Thursday I had already “cheated,” and by Friday or Saturday, I was bingeing and saying to myself, “It’s okay. You’ll start a new diet on Monday and you will follow it to the “T”.”

This went on for decades. Literally decades.

Over the years, my weight fluctuated and was inversely related to my satisfaction in romantic relationships. I was “fat and happy” in relationships where I felt secure. And I was “thin and needy” in relationships that weren’t going so well.

However, it didn’t matter what my weight was, I was never satisfied with how my body looked.

Even though I was in the personal development and fitness industries for years, I struggled with emotional eating. It was my secret pain, the part of my life that I fiercely tried to hide from the rest of the world.

I remember having to “replace” food that I binged on so that my live-in boyfriend wouldn’t discover my overeating secret.

However, sometimes, I couldn’t keep it a secret, “You ate the whole thing?” he would say in astonishment and disbelief.

I was disgusted with myself.

The cycle of emotional eating and stress eating is a painful experience that erodes whatever self-esteem a person might have into a little pile of dust. The cycle perpetuates feelings of disappointment, shame, guilt, and worthlessness.

And, if you are struggling with emotional eating, then I want to share with you the seven things I wish I knew once I realized that I was an emotional eater.

Lesson 1: You’re A Good Person And You Deserve To Be Happy.

Guilt and shame are emotions that perpetuate emotional eating. Some of the main causes for feeling guilt and shame include the following:

• Trauma from the past, especially childhood
• Stressful event in adulthood, including losing a job, divorce, loss of a loved one
• Poor self-image and self-worth
• Lack of healthy tools to manage stress and negative emotions

Regardless of the trigger for why a person uses food to deal with their negative emotions, after a binge, according to the American Psychological Association, almost half of emotional eaters feel disappointed in themselves and bad about their bodies.

So, while a person may be trying to distract themselves from stress and negative emotions by overeating junk foods, what ends up happening is that they feel even worse after the bingeing episode.

The thing to note here is that the original negative emotions (fear, worry, doubt, frustration, anger, and sadness) are replaced by negative emotions associated with self-worth…guilt, shame, disappointment, and self-hatred.

What Can You Do?

To combat the habitual patterning of having low self-confidence and feelings of worthlessness, start the daily practice of self-acknowledgment and positive affirmations. Basically, start programming your mind with positive and uplifting messages about yourself.

Lesson 2: Dieting Isn’t The Answer…Although It Is Part Of The Solution

Emotional eaters often struggle with achieving their ideal weight, due to the large quantities of junk food that they eat. A common misperception emotional eaters think is that they just need to “stick to their diet” or find “the right diet for them” and then they will stop stress eating.

Junk foods are scientifically engineered to make you want to eat more of them. These hyperpalatable foods, processed foods that are high in calories and excessively sweet, sugary, and fatty, actually increase your desire to eat more.

One of the first steps to healing from emotional overeating is to stop eating junk foods and to eat a diet that consists of whole foods.

Now, you may be thinking, “I can’t do that…everytime I try to eat healthy foods, I fall off the wagon and then binge again.”

A healthy diet that does not include hyperpalatable junk foods is only part of the solution. It is necessary to only eat hyperpalatable foods in moderation if you want to successfully stop emotional eating. Because there is such a strong biological response to junk foods, eating hyperpalatable foods is just going to make it harder to stop the overeating habit.

On my personal journey, eating a paleo diet really helped me to curb sugar cravings and to lose weight. Later, after becoming a vegetarian, the ketogenic diet is where I really discovered the ideal diet for my body and for my emotional balance.

We are all different. And, there are many diets to choose from. Just make sure that your nutrition plan consists of nourishing, whole foods and limits processed foods.

Lesson 3: Cheat Meals Are Dangerous Territory For Emotional Eaters

When I first learned about cheat meals, the planned times when you could indulge in the foods you were staying away from most of the time, I couldn’t believe that I could eat junk food sometimes and still lose weight.

I did lose fat while strength training, eating paleo, and having a weekly or bi-monthly cheat meal.

So…I did successfully lose weight.

However, as an emotional overeater, I was extreme with cheat meals.

I would basically binge for a few hours once or twice a month. I was doing the very thing that I had done for most of my entire life. I made myself sick by overeating, and the next day, I would fast and still have that uncomfortable sensation of a full stomach for most of the day.

I was able to lose weight and appear to be in shape, even though I still had an unhealthy relationship with food.

The underlying problem with cheat meals is that they peg certain types of food as “bad” and when that judgment is being made, it’s common for the person who indulges in the bad food to feel guilt and shame about it.

As an emotional overeater, you must heal the relationship you have with food (and ultimately yourself!). Regardless of whether your body looks the way you want it to, or if everyone else thinks you are healthy, the cycle of overeating can negatively impact the way you value yourself.

What Can You Do?

Instead of viewing indulgences as cheats, reframe why you eat nourishing foods. Here are some things to consider:

• Instead of looking at food as good or bad, judge foods based on how you will feel after you eat them.
• Before you indulge, be mindful of why you are choosing to do so. Are you trying to avoid an emotional response to a situation that triggered you? Do you want to be comforted? Are you over-stressed?  Do you feel out of control?  Do you plan on wolfing down junk food in secrecy? Are you looking forward to “checking out” while you eat? Or, are you out with friends and enjoying a treat?

If you do choose to indulge in hyperpalatable foods, savor them! Chew slowly. When I was in binge mode, I barely tasted the foods I was eating. I would just “inhale” them.

Rather than having an all-out cheat meal where you eat large quantities of whatever you are craving, have a refeed meal instead. A refeed is a strategic meal that is planned and has a specific intention…keeping your body in fat-burning mode…often by increasing caloric and carbohydrate intake.

Psychologically, cheat meals are about satisfying an emotional need. In order to shift away from emotional eating, you must stop using food as an emotional pacifier. During a refeed meal, you can still enjoy hyperpalatable foods…but in a limited quantity, and in accordance to the intended caloric and macro goals for the meal.

Lesson 4: More Exercise Is NOT The Answer

Have you done this?

You indulge in junk food….and then say to yourself, “I’ll make up for it by running 2 extra miles tomorrow.”

You can’t undo unhealthy eating choices and overindulgence just by increasing your exercise output.  When I tried to undo emotional eating by over-exercising, I ended up spending hours a week running…and my self-esteem was still ridiculously low and I was stuck in the overeating-shame cycle.

What Can You Do?

Follow a fitness program geared towards maximum general physical preparedness. Make your fitness goals performance-based, for example, getting your first pull up or push up, rather than based on how many calories you intend to burn during a training session.  When done in balance, exercise will uplift you and make you feel better about yourself.

Lesson 5: I Needed A Better Way To Deal With My Emotions

Let’s cut to the chase.

If you struggle with emotional overeating there is one thing you need to deal with that you are highly inclined to ignore: Your Emotions

If you use food to distract yourself from stress and uncomfortable feelings, you might also tend to think that the solution to your problem lies in nutrition and exercise.

And you might think, “If only I could eat better and exercise more, my problems will be solved!”

This is just a game of smoke and mirrors that you play with yourself so that you don’t have to deal with…

…you got it…

…your emotions!

It can be quite scary to feel your feelings. However, this is precisely what you need to do. And there are several ways to do just that.

Oh wait. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Before you can “feel your feelings,” I recommend that you start a meditation practice.  Even a practice as short as 5 minutes long will go a long way.

Here are the benefits of meditation for an emotional eater:

• Teaches you to become aware of your feelings, observe them, and even make friends with them, in a safe, neutral space
• Clears the negative self-talk clutter in the mind
• Creates a mental environment where negative thought patterns can’t thrive
• Increases awareness so that you can identify unhealthy patterns and change them (rather than feeling like you have no control over stress eating)
• Activates your parasympathetic nervous system so that you can remain calm and even handle more stress

What Can You Do?

It’s important to try meditation and work a few minutes into your day.  Meditation is a healthy way to cope with the root cause of emotional eating, stress and negative emotions. The occurrences  of stress eating may significantly decrease once you integrate a consistent meditation practice into your life.

Lesson 6: I Needed To Give My Emotions A Voice

So now what?

Well, now it’s time to actually get into the nitty-gritty aspect of what you are running away from in the first place.

The next thing I wish I knew early on in my struggle with emotional overeating was that I couldn’t simply just become aware of my emotions. I had to do something with them.

I had to feel my emotions and I had to express them. I had to understand why they were inside me and what was the force that caused them to be there in the first place.

This is where things got interesting.

Because, if you are someone who doesn’t like to feel uncomfortable feelings, then, this is precisely the place where you need to go.

The emotions that scared me the most were the ones associated with abandonment and not being wanted by someone I cared about.

I was great at diving into sadness and even joy and enthusiasm.

And the one emotion that I didn’t start feeling until AFTER I turned 40 was quite the shocker…

ANGER!

The red-hot, out of control sensation of anger flowing through my body scared me when I first allowed myself to feel it.

So, these emotions, the ones that have been pent up for years and maybe even decades, need to be processed.

And there are healthy ways to process them. I share one way here.

What Can You Do?

• Body Scan to Feel Sensations
• Journal to Express Your Feelings
• Do Something Creative

Lesson 7: Silence Will Keep You A Prisoner

I didn’t really start to make headway in healing my overeating habit until I did the unthinkable…I started to talk about it. There is so much shame, pain, and secrecy involved with emotional overeating that you may feel like you are the only one who goes through it. You’re not alone.

And while you may spend a lot of effort and energy hiding it from your friends and family, you disempower its hold over you when you let other people know about your struggle with stress eating.

You may even be surprised when one of your friends opens up about her own struggle with emotional overeating.

Brene Brown, the thought leader and author of Daring Greatly, defines vulnerability as, “uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.”

Being vulnerable takes courage and strength. And for the emotional eater who spends a lot of time in secrecy, hiding their habit, shame, and pain from the rest of the world, it is the ultimate path towards loving yourself.

What Can You Do?

Emotional eating is a cycle that CAN be broken. Reaching out to others is an important step in the process. One that I wish I would’ve taken much, much sooner.

And I’m here for you.  Just email me at anna(at)meditationmix(dot)com.  You can do this!  I believe in you!

Anna has a free gift for you. She helps busy women and men stop emotional overeating and improve their self image with simple and effective tools.