Emotional eating

October 7th, 2009 by Jayne Cox

Do you eat because of your feelings?
Do you seek to numb or quiet your negative thoughts through food?
Are you eating your emotions?

It feels absolutely dreadful when your eating is out of control. Living with any eating disorder is a daily battle but emotional eaters often feel unheard , isolated, greedy and very ashamed. If anything they look normal or over weight, so it’s overlooked, suffered in silence not unlike Bulimia. Most clients who contact me tell the same sort of story of weight gain and loss and weight loss feels like the only success in life. Sadly everything else is over shadowed, career, family and even amazing good fortune. How they feel/ what’s happening in their lives is openly expressed through their weight at the time. ‘I was slim and happy and I was so very low/unhappy and fat!’

There is another way...

You can learn to understand your relationship with food and feelings by looking at it in a different way. If you find a skilled therapist or even a coach that understands food related behaviours you can lay the foundations for a good relationship with yourself and food. Once built, this foundation allows you understand why you’ve developed a coping mechanism of using food and look at other ways to manage your thoughts and feelings. I work with my clients to develop new positive ways to express feelings, find relaxation and outlets to share feelings. Friendship reviews can be useful, are you people pleasing? Do you give too much?

It can be fun to find out who you really are, are you ready?