If you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll know that I believe that in order to truly lose weight and help your emotional eating, it starts in your mind.
But how do you manage your mind around eating? It seems a little complicated. Let me give you some tips:
- The first thing you have to do is recognize that your brain truly IS the problem. It’s not your fault. You have trained your brain to think that when it’s uncomfortable it should eat something & it will feel better. Your brain has actually formed a neural pathway that “thinks” it knows exactly what you do when you’re feeling stressed, sad, lonely…etc.. It’s just doing what you’ve always done! You’ve turned to food so often that your brain automatically goes there. It’s like a switch that turns on in your head. You can’t move forward until you truly understand that this has happened in your brain.
- You have to get very good at feeling your feelings.
This is not easy. Believe me.
I had stuffed my feelings for so long that I wasn’t even aware what I was feeling.
I had things going on in my life that I needed to address & didn’t want to.
It was uncomfortable. So, I’d eat instead. I did this without even knowing I was doing it.
The next time you’re feeling uncomfortable & want to eat when you’re not hungry; STOP.
Ask yourself – “What am I really feeling?”
Here’s a great list you can use to understand your feelings:
Acknowledge that feeling & truly FEEL IT. This may take practice. And, it will be a process that isn’t going to happen over night. You may realize that you are very sad & it will bring up emotions you don’t want to feel.
FEEL THEM!! The emotional eating cycle will never be healed until you start to feel your feelings.
- Once you know how your brain works & you are feeling your feelings, be prepared to live in “uncomfortable” until a new neural pathway starts forming in your brain. Think of it like a river. It flows a certain way for so long that it’s just natural. If you try to carve in a new way for the water to flow, it’s not going to want to go down the new path. It wants to stick to what is familiar. I like to think of this process as the River of Misery. You’re going to feel worse before you feel better. Here’s what it felt like for me: Image you’re sitting in a warm hot tub. You’re soaking your tired muscles & it feels great. (This represents emotional eating at it’s best. It feels good!) As you sit in the hot tub, the water starts to turn cold & you are very uncomfortable. You immediately want to get out!! This is what it feels like to start a new neural pathway in your brain. You are trying to train your brain to think differently & it won’t want to do it. But, the secret is to sit in the uncomfortable. Sit in the ice cold water! Endure it. The reward on the other side is 10x greater than stuffing your feelings with food. I promise!
The best part about changing my brain around food was that it didn’t just affect my weight. It affected my entire life!! All the feelings I had been stuffing were now being resolved. My marriage improved. My relationships with my children improved. My business improved. I had more confidence. I started to LIVE my life instead of hiding from it.
When you learn to manage your brain, you learn to manage your LIFE!
