Buffering away our emotions with food and alcohol leaves us feeling full and empty at the same time.
Being willing to stay with ourselves when we feel discomfort is one of the greatest forms of self-love.
You don’t need a pacifier. You need to understand what is under your urges and difficult emotions, and what they’re trying to tell you.
I want you to try and reframe your urges and cravings.
Your urges are an access point.
They are telling you that you need and want something, and maybe it’s necessary for you to also remind yourself that it’s OK to need and want things.
They are ALWAYS helpful.
When you shift gears from frustration into curiosity, you will finally be able to understand what they’re revealing to you and help yourself properly.
I want to remind you that you might genuinely need food. Not all urges = emotional eating.
That’s why it’s so important to connect with your hunger using the hunger scale and your body’s cues. So many of us under-eat and don’t give our bodies what they need to feel energised and nourished, and then are frustrated when they do what’s required to get what they need (and we still call it emotional eating).
So, please eat three square meals a day. Make those meals decent, satisfying, and delicious.
And if you are genuinely hungry in between those meals, remind yourself that’s OK. That’s brilliant! Your body is working just as it should and you can decide to eat something that’s going to meet its needs (which is unlikely 2 cold fish fingers, 7 maltesers, a slice of cheese, some crisps and 1/2 a bottle of wine 😬).
And then when you have the urge to eat something when you’re not hungry (because you’ve already asked yourself if you are — and if you don’t know, then you’re probably not), it’ll likely be for something very specific (unlike when you’re hungry because your body just wants food!), pause. Take a deep breath. Try to understand what’s going on.
Here are some questions you can ask yourself in those moments:
what exactly do I want right now and what do I want this food to do for me?
how do I want eating to make me feel? will eating make me genuinely feel that way?
what emotions am I trying to escape right now? If I was happy and content, would I still want to eat in this moment?
if I was busy and fulfilled right now, would I still want food?
does my body want this food? why is it important to respect my body?
what is this urge revealing to me?
why am I judging how I feel as a problem? if I feel bored, can I allow myself to be bored and/or find other forms of entertainment that don’t cause me regret and negative downstream consequences?
if I’m tired, what do I really need right now?
if I want connection, how can I create that?
if I want something for me, how can I give that to myself?
when did I learn that how I feel was a problem and that negative emotion was something to be numbed? what if I chose not to believe that in this moment? What would I do differently?
what would kindness have me do? why is self-kindness important to me?
Screenshot these. They should be enough to pull you through some of your urges without obeying them so that you can start teaching your brain a new reaction to how you feel.
Over time, the urge to eat in response to emotions fizzles out and that’s when you feel peaceful and free.
But the key is to want to answer these questions in those hard moments instead of saying F*CK-IT.
Why is it important, even essential, that you stop saying F*CK-IT? What is this behaviour stopping you from feeling and doing in your life? How is it limiting you and why do you want it to be different?
If you’re interested in coaching with me, you can find out more here >