When you think of healing emotional eating, for most, thoughts of forcing, restricting, and depriving come to mind. But that’s far from the truth behind how to heal emotional eating. When we come from a space of open and honest truth, you see that what you really need to heal has always been right inside of you.
When you’re mindlessly munching away or intensely stress eating, there are aspects of truth that can be addressed. Years ago, when I was in the midst of what I call my diet depression (50 diets in 4 years), I used eating as a way to self-soothe and punish myself. I was either depriving myself of anything good or totally engulfed in not feeling my feelings and using food as a distraction to them.
The thing about healing emotional eating is that it doesn’t start with something outside of ourselves. You don’t heal by jumping on the next diet fad or joining the next trendy weight loss program. The real healing begins when you look yourself in the eyes and recognize who you are and who you want to be. When we are truthful about ourselves, we give ourselves permission to get deep and look at the parts that aren’t the prettiest to look at (but contain the most potential for healing).
Healing emotional eating is all about being honest.
The intention to heal emotional eating begins with recognizing that you aren’t where you want to be. And there’s nothing wrong with that. This is a pivotal part of your healing journey. We have to address the things that we don’t like so that we can move into something that is in alignment with what we actually want. Healing emotional eating begins when you see that it has become a problem.
When we can see things for what they actually are (ie: accepting that you are an emotional eater), you can move into the space of healing and transformation. It’s when we deny the truth of our reality that we are unable to change.
When you get honest with yourself about healing emotional eating, you start to realize that it’s not the food that you’re actually hungry for. There’s something underneath it all that is the driving factor behind why you’ve been doing what you do. If you’re not actually hungry for the food, why do you reach for it? You get to be one hundred percent honest with yourself here for any healing to begin to occur.
What are you searching for through your food? Is it a distraction? A way to fill something you feel is missing? Are you avoiding something that’s pressing your mind? The path to answering these questions leads me to step three in healing emotional eating.
This is where true healing is. The diet industry introduces fad diets and trendy weight loss plans to distract you from getting deep and personal with yourself about what’s actually going on. Healing emotional eating is part of the delicate process of understanding what’s happening for what it is and being open and vulnerable with yourself to accept what you find out.
This part of the process is about honesty. It’s about looking inside of yourself and asking the hard questions about where there may be trauma, why you use food as a drug and the parts of you that are crying out for help through your consumption.
The journey of healing emotional eating starts and ends with you. It’s not up to the diet industry (they are definitely not on your side). It’s up to you.
I wrote my new book with all of this in mind. I know exactly what it’s like to be in the midst of being a victim of emotional eating. But it doesn’t have to be this way. You deserve to live in and love a body that you hold sacred. After all, our bodies hold the most knowledge.
My new book is ready for you. You can check it out linked below.
