In the upcoming weeks - maybe even months - I want to spend time looking at our relationship with food by looking at the way we show up around food when we battle emotional eating.

I also want to share that in January I will be starting my training for my Certification, and I’m so excited for the work I’m about to be doing, and I plan to share my experiences and learnings with you, but would also like to forewarn, that my messages or understanding may change, but I want to offer that that is the beauty of coaching, is that we learn to change our mind in a way that serves us better.

So, over the coming weeks, while I discuss my knowledge and understanding of emotional eating and the different emotions, I may have my understanding deepen! Let’s get started!

I ant to start by defining emotional eating. There is the google definition:

Emotional eating

Emotional eating (or stress eating) is using food to make yourself feel better—eating to satisfy emotional needs, rather than to satisfy physical hunger.

-The Googles

And there are my understandings, which include and build upon this definition. I would argue that this definition is a bit simplified and that emotional eating is the behavior of choosing to eat from an emotional place.

We can fall into the emotional eating habit in childhood, and it may never be a problem for a lot of us, but in the following 3 ways, I think making food choices based on emotion that are highly destructive, and what we don’t tend to think of as emotional eating.

1. Yo-yo diets - The entire premise behind dieting is what can launch us down the destructive pathways of emotional eating. These can look like depriving ourselves of food for months on end to lose weight, begins the process of deeming foods as good or bad. The act of categorizing food, make some of the foods a forbidden pleasure that we are battling our desire (feeling) to avoid.

2. Bingeing/starving cycle - When we have developed this habit, we are depriving ourselves of food for an extended period of time, regardless of the hunger we may experience, then OVER eating later. The behavior of over eating can lead us to then feel disappointed thus inspiring another long hunger strike against ourselves as an act of punishment. I would argue that using food in this way is emotional eating.

3. Only eating nutritionally void food “because it tastes better.” - It may be hard to see how this is like emotional eating, but I would argue it is. If we are avoiding all vegetables, which our bodies need because we don’t like the taste and only DESIRE the food that is nutritionally void, then we are making a decision from an emotional place.

While these patterns are not looking at food as just a means for feeling better, they are making food choices from a place of emotion rather than logic or nature. By breaking these habits, along with the desire to eat to feel better, we learn to rebuild our relationship with food.

The first valuable point to start with is by noticing that their is no such thing as good or bad food, and that it is healthier and better to look at food for its nutritional value. This is because all food has some kind of nutritional value. There are vitamins and minerals in the food that we eat, whether artificially or not, and we can survive off of “bad” (nutritionally void) food. The reason we want to define these, is because looking at food for how it feeds our body is part of a healthy mindset around food that can lead to weight loss and lowered weight maintenance.

Also, no two people have the same nutritional needs. The FDA would say we do as a general whole, but how we get the vitamins and minerals we need, in the amounts we need, will vary. One person may need more fat in their diet, while another needs less. One may need more red meat while another needs considerable less. We each have a combination and the specific combination that you need, is going to be unique to you, and based on your health and wellness. You figure out your combination through the tuning in and listening to your body.

I mentioned a moment ago, that by healing our relationship with food and breaking the cycle of emotional eating, we may lose weight. I also mentioned that making emotional decisions about food may not be a problem for a lot of us. So I’d like to offer that healing our relationship with food is much deeper that just losing weight, and before making any kind of decision to lose weight, you should really be practicing self love.

The world is very devoid of self love and acceptance, so knowing WHY you want to lose weight in the first place will be important to understanding part of why you are emotionally eating anyway. What MAY also happen, is you may heal your relationship with food and your body, and decide that you LIKE your current lifestyle and that nothing needs to change.

I offer this because a lot of why we eat emotionally in the first place, is because we are unhappy in some facet. We believe that our health, weight and body is the key or the cause. We think that if we lose the weight we will be happy. This link is the messed up cycle our brain takes us through and it is destructive and most likely what led you here in the first place.

Now, can you want to lose weight, and love your body? I think I’ve mentioned this before, but YES! You can desire to be healthy for your own sake. You can just WANT to look a certain way. I just want you to be clear on why. If you think that you will achieve a new degree of happiness BECAUSE of your weight, then I’d like to offer you are wrong.

This is WHY I did the episode on self love.

You must love and accept yourself as you are now. You must understand that happiness is only accessible in the NOW and that chasing it, will never lead to it. You are beautiful now. You are perfect now. You are amazing now. And as long as you don’t believe these things, you will have a wounded relationship with food.