Take a deep breath and repeat after me.. ‘You can overcome emotional eating!’ You see, the first step is actually believing that you can.
1) Believing in Yourself
If you don’t believe in yourself and your ability to overcome a situation, you’ll end up feeling like its hopeless. Maybe you have tried many times to overcome emotional eating, for decades even and you feel frustrated that it just hasn’t worked for you. You may have even bought books on the subject in the hope of finding a strategy that would work for you.
2) Different Levels of Emotional Eating
Emotional eating is often deeply entwined in feelings of anxiety and depression. What may have started off as merely simple enjoyment of foods may have developed over time into different levels of emotional eating.
The magnitude to which emotional eating affects someone’s life varies from person to person. For some people it can feel excruciatingly painful, frustrating and contribute significantly to lowered self-esteem and unhappiness. Sometimes it may feel as if other people just don’t understand. Sometimes other people’s opinions or advice may leave you feeling even worse.
Emotional eating can also contribute to significant weight gain. This can further fuel depression and low self-esteem as emotional eaters may find it more difficult to lose weight.
3) Conflicting Dietary Advice
With so many conflicting messages about what we should and shouldn’t eat, attempting to lose weight can feel like a futile task and leave emotional eaters feeling particularly vulnerable and upset. Sadly, incorrect or inappropriate dietary advice may only exacerbate the situation further rather than improve it.
Often a person may not have succeeded in overcoming emotional eating because the approach used or given to them just wasn’t right for them. Or maybe they were going through a very difficult time in their life and it just wasn’t possible for the treatment to progress.
4) Managing Expectations
Sometimes its about managing short-term hopes and expectations. If a person hoped or expected things to resolve completely but then experienced another bout of emotional eating further down the line, they may feel like they have failed. And from there the cycle continues.
There are so many reasons as to why someone may or may not have overcome emotional eating. How long it takes for somebody to overcome this situation really depends on multiple factors, including how deeply a person has struggled with it, and for how long. So what steps can you take to begin your journey to change?
5) Practical Steps to Success:
- Start believing in yourself.
- Aim for progress not perfection. It is possible for things to improve and you must be kind to yourself along the way.
- Acknowledge when you do something slightly differently, or when you make a slightly different choice. These are all situations that will help to build your confidence back. Bit by bit.
- Don’t beat yourself up when things haven’t gone as planned.
- Manage your expectations. Don’t expect things to change dramatically overnight. Instead be open to the possibility that with time and the right approach you can get better at managing your relationship with food. This is how you overcome it.
- Write down, remember and practice steps 1-5, as reading them here won’t be enough!
Final Word – Our Food Environment
We are living in a highly obesogenic environment. There are highly palatable foods and drinks everywhere, strategically manufactured, marketed and placed to encourage us to buy, consume and increase profit and sales! Overcoming emotional eating is also about re-learning ways to navigate in this world and getting better at doing so. As well as committing to developing strategies and coping mechanisms to help manage anxiety, depression and life challenges in general.
This is all doable. Even if it seems impossible at the moment. You can find yourself in a situation where you will look back and realise that you have made massive improvements in your relationship with food! It may not be perfect but it can definitely improve for the better!
It’s a journey and it has to start somewhere.
The first step is believing that you can.
Nutrition Coaching & Support
If you’ve been following my blog over the years, you’ll know that I’m passionate about supporting those who want to achieve a healthier, happier weight for life, but who also suffer significantly from emotional eating and dieting / relapse cycles that often affects their ability to maintain their weight loss successfully long-term. You can find out more about my Nutrition Coaching, Exercise and Daily Support Service here.
Further Reading On Emotional Eating:
http://www.demeraradelight.com/are-you-struggling-with-emotional-eating/
http://www.demeraradelight.com/how-to-break-free-from-dieting-for-good/