Emotional Eating Archivum

Practicing gratitude to stop emotional eating

Balanced Life Emotional Eating Healthy Lifestyle

Gratitude helps you see the positive aspects of your life, brightens your mood, and consequently reduces the need to eat to feel better.

How we feel – how happy we are, how stressed we are, even how well we sleep – may seem like it’s out of our hands, but it is actually often a choice we make. We can choose to be grateful for what we have and feel more blissful. Or we can choose to focus on what we’re lacking, who has wronged us, and what’s not going our way. And guess what? We’ll feel miserable. We may blame others, circumstances, or fate for our unhappiness. But at the end of the day, it’s often about us and the choices we make.

One of the simplest ways I find to be able to shift my mood is focusing on gratitude. Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done.

But as a motivation to practice gratitude more often let’s see the benefits of gratitude, how you can easily integrate it into your life, and how practising gratitude helps to stop emotional eating.

Navigating Emotional Eating and Food Temptation During the Holiday Season

Emotional Eating

I talked about emotional eating and navigating food temptations during the holiday season on Instagram with Samantha, the founder of Inner Bloom, a women’s personal development platform.

You can watch the replay HERE.

We talked about:
🌸 Our own experiences with overeating.
🌸 How the overeating or binging habit forms.
🌸 Understanding our eating patterns.
🌸 Pinpointing triggers leading to stress-induced snacking and emotional indulgences.
🌸 How to replace these habits with healthy, mindful choices.
🌸 How to navigate eating during the holiday season,
🌸 and so much more.

I gave so much value. Honestly, if you just implement some of the things I suggested during our 1-hour long chat, you will feel a huge difference.

You’ll also see how awkward I am when I speak live in front of a camera 😅 and why my husband says I look like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit when I laugh 🤣

But you’ll also see that I didn’t care. I’ve accepted myself with my awkwardness and only concentrated on teaching you as much as I could during that short time.

By the way, Inner Bloom is an amazing women’s sanctuary for self-development. There are courses and other resources from 50 coaches teaching you mindset, self-belief and confidence, emotional management, manifestation, self-compassion, holistic health, spirituality, business and more. I’m honoured to be one of the 50 coaches.

At the moment you can join this community for a very small fee and have access to all 50 courses for 12 months. Samantha also does Instagram Lives every week with one of the coaches, just like she did with me last week at @bloombabes.ltd.

Check out the platform and the courses here.

“Inner Bloom is a self-paced, self-help interactive platform with over a 100 hours of transformative content, masterclasses, courses, ebooks and audios specifically designed to let you explore and understand the many facets that make you, YOU!

Recognizing that every woman’s journey of self-discovery is as unique as her fingerprint, it features a collective group of Coaches, Healers and Practitioners from around the world to guide you on your unique journey.

It’s organised into intuitive bundles for seamless navigation and learning and includes a community chat where you can connect with our featured coaches and other like-minded women on similar journeys.”

You can also join for free and check out some of the content.

If you need further help with emotional eating check out my free training here or book a free discovery call to talk about your eating issues. If you would like to work with me, join my 12-week Eliminate Emotional Eating program.

Autumn: The Best Time to Begin Overcoming Emotional Eating

Emotional Eating

Are you struggling with emotional eating, those moments when your emotions take the reins, leading you to unhealthy food choices? You’re not alone. Eating for emotional reasons can be a challenging issue, but the good news is that autumn is the best time to begin overcoming emotional eating and reaching food freedom. Here are several reasons why this season is the perfect time to start addressing emotional eating:

Season of Change and Renewal

Autumn is a season of transformation. The leaves change colours and eventually fall, signifying a fresh start. In the same way, it’s an ideal time for you to make a change in your relationship with food. Embrace the changing leaves as a symbol of your own renewal, where you let go of old habits and welcome healthier choices.

Comfort in Cozy Foods

Autumn is synonymous with comfort foods like soups, stews, and warm beverages. These foods can provide a sense of cosiness and security, making it an excellent opportunity to explore your emotional triggers around food. As you indulge in these comforting dishes, you can work on identifying and managing your emotional eating patterns.

Reduced Social Pressure

Summer often comes with social pressure related to body image and appearance. With cooler temperatures, layers of clothing become the norm during autumn, reducing the external pressure to conform to certain beauty standards. This is the perfect time to focus on your internal well-being without the stress of external expectations.

The Urgency Problem

If you can’t let go of the urgency to shed pounds quickly, it’s really tough to build a better relationship with food and your body. Quick fixes usually don’t last. I’ve got a 10-minute video or audio recording where I explain this in simple words (don’t mind my accent, English isn’t my first language). I really hope you watch or listen because it’s important to get this concept.

Reflective Season

Autumn invites introspection. The days grow shorter, and there’s a natural inclination to slow down and reflect on life’s changes. Use this reflective time to examine your relationship with food and your emotional triggers. What patterns have you noticed, and how can you make healthier choices?

Building Resilience

Autumn’s weather can be unpredictable, teaching us to adapt to changing circumstances. This resilience can translate to your journey to food freedom. Learning to cope with emotions without eating and finding healthier ways to address your feelings is a form of personal resilience that can benefit you year-round.

Setting Healthy Holiday Habits

As autumn progresses, we approach the holiday season. By addressing emotional eating now, you can establish healthier habits before the holiday feasts. Learning to enjoy holiday foods in moderation is an essential skill for maintaining your well-being.

Preparing for the New Year

Autumn serves as a transition into a new year. By addressing emotional eating during this season, you’re setting yourself up for a fresh start in the coming year. You’ll enter the new year with a healthier relationship with food and a greater understanding of your emotional triggers.

Ready for Next Summer

By tackling emotional eating during autumn, you’re setting the stage for a healthier and happier next summer. When you stop overeating and making food choices driven by emotions, you’re on the path to sustainable weight loss. Say goodbye to the rush and quick-fixes, and welcome those pretty summer dresses.

Reducing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a form of depression that typically occurs during the fall and winter months. Emotional eating can be a coping mechanism for those experiencing SAD. By addressing emotional eating during autumn, you can take steps to manage your emotional well-being and reduce the risk of using food as a temporary comfort.

Developing Healthy Coping Strategies

Autumn provides a safe space to work on developing healthy coping strategies for managing emotions. As the days get shorter and the weather cools, you can practice alternative methods for addressing stress, anxiety, or sadness, such as mindfulness, exercise, or creative activities.

Mindfulness to Food Freedom course

Conclusion

Autumn is the ideal season to embark on the journey toward food freedom and address emotional eating. With its themes of change, comfort, and introspection, this season offers numerous opportunities to explore your relationship with food and build a healthier, happier you.

By understanding the emotional aspects of your relationship with food and addressing your emotional triggers, you can find greater peace and freedom in your eating habits. This autumn, take the first step towards a healthier, happier you, and let the journey begin.

If you’re ready to break free from emotional eating and develop a healthier relationship with food, consider booking a free discovery call. During that call, you can talk about your specific issues, and I’ll explain how I can help you. I’ll answer any questions you have. If you feel like we’re a good fit, we can schedule your first coaching session. If not, no worries, and you’ll leave with a better understanding of your eating habits. There’s nothing to lose.

If you want to learn more about my process check out this presentation about the 6-step strategy to stop feeling out of control around food and eliminate emotional eating and stress-eating.

Discover Freedom from Emotional Eating through Hobbies

Emotional Eating

Discover how having a hobby can help you take the first steps towards freedom from emotional eating!

The content of this blog post is taken from my podcast interview with Hobbyscool. You can listen to the podcast here:

Emotional Eating: Breaking the Cycle with Science, Psychology, and Hobbies With Rita May

How having a hobby can help with emotional eating?

Savour Life, Not Food

Having a hobby can serve as a better way of releasing stress than eating. When people are very busy and tired they need to prioritize self-care and a hobby can be a great way of spending some time to do something they enjoy.

The more you enjoy your life, the less you need to escape from it using food, alcohol, or social media. So if you have some fun hobbies, you feel better and you don’t need food as an emotional crutch.

Loneliness

Hobbies can be a good solution for loneliness too because you may meet other people engaging in the same hobby. You can do the hobby together or join online communities and make friends with people who have the same hobby.

Boredom

And if you eat because you’re simply bored, instead of using food as entertainment, you can take up a hobby or two. When you think: I don’t know what to do, maybe I should eat…, you can remind yourself that you could also practice your hobby instead.

Having an interesting hobby that you’re looking forward to doing makes boring tasks more tolerable too. You know that after finishing the boring task you can do something fun.

It can be a good reward after a stressful day as well instead of rewarding yourself with food.

Healthy distraction

Of course, hobbies can also work as a distraction from eating when you start giving up emotional and compulsive eating. When you have the urge to eat you can distract yourself and keep your hands busy with your hobby.

Distraction is actually not what I teach to my clients as a permanent solution since it’s not always possible to do (especially if you’re at work) and I also believe that it’s better to learn to feel your feelings instead of avoiding them.

We also need to find the underlying issues for emotional eating and solve those problems instead of covering them up with eating or hobbies. Because covering up is like putting a useless band-aid on an infected wound. You can’t see the wound anymore but it’s still there and it’s getting worse under that useless band-aid.

But a healthy distraction, such as a hobby, can be a good tool to start with until you develop emotional fitness and solve the underlying issue.

Planning activities you enjoy

After working with me for a while food becomes a much less important part of my clients’ lives and suddenly they have a lot of free time that they previously spent thinking about food, diets and criticising and torturing their bodies. Often when I ask them what they want to fill this time with they have no idea because they got used to spending that time researching the latest diet, planning their new meal plan or finding some magic solution. That’s why I ask them in advance to think about hobbies and activities they enjoy but don’t have time to do now so they can have a list of activities to choose from later.

Which hobbies help to reach freedom from emotional eating?

Journaling

Journaling is a relaxing hobby, to start with. When you’re struggling with some challenging emotions or are just trying to process a bad day, writing about what is happening can help improve your mood and lower stress. It also helps you process your feelings and notice patterns of behaviour that might affect your emotional state.

There are many ways journaling can help you.

Food journal to uncover your triggers

If you want to discover what triggers your emotional eating I highly recommend writing down in your food journal how you feel before and after eating, what happened before eating, how stressed you were that day, how much you slept, relationship issues, and any other factors affecting you.

I designed the free journal below for you to be able to do exactly that. You can download it here.

If you see your eating habits, your feelings around food, mealtimes, and events written in your journal, you may notice the recurring situations that cause you to overeat.

Brain dumping

Another great way of journaling is a brain dump.

This simply means you write down whatever is on your mind, and keep writing until you feel lighter. Getting those thoughts out on paper helps you release some of the tension, and you also gain a little more clarity.

Gratitude Journal

You can also write down in your journal what you’re grateful for.

You can write down 5-10 things every day. Turn this into a daily ritual that you do every morning or evening, and you will notice the difference it makes very quickly.

Exercise

Another good hobby is exercising. I’m not talking about completing a difficult fitness challenge or pushing yourself to do some extreme form of activity you hate.

Instead, find some workouts that you actually enjoy. These can help you improve your mood exponentially, and it’s good for your physical health as well.

Maybe you want to try

Walking or hiking (or skiing if possible)
Dancing
Yoga or Pilates
Weight lifting
Playing with your kids or pets
Bike riding in nature
Gardening

Meditation

Another great hobby could be meditating. There are many good meditations on YouTube and there are meditation apps too. For my clients, I make personalised meditations and brain rewiring audios to help them reprogram their minds and replace their old unhelpful beliefs (such as “I can’t do this”, “I‘m destined to be fat”, and so on) to more helpful and empowering beliefs.

Here you will find 1 video, 2 audio recordings and more than 300 written affirmations beautifully formatted on printable pages. You can either listen to or read these mantras every day to reprogram your unconscious mind around your relationship with food and your body.

Art and creativity for freedom from emotional eating through hobbies

Colouring is a nice relaxing hobby too to release stress. There are colouring books for adults too.

Art, photography, painting, playing an instrument, knitting, or learning any new skills can help release endorphins and make you feel better.

If you’re struggling with emotional eating, you don’t have to face it alone. Take the time to explore activities that can help you cope and manage your emotions in a healthier way and see how you can take the first steps towards freedom from emotional eating through hobbies.

If you need support, join my private Facebook Group and consider working with me. I have a 12-week 1 on 1 coaching program to help you eliminate emotional eating. Book a free call here if you would like to talk with me directly about your issues.

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Inner Bloom,a women's platform for self-discovery and self-development

Inner Bloom – a women’s santruary for self-discovery and self-development

Balanced Life Emotional Eating

It´s not your fault that you struggle with food, your weight, and your body image (49)

Managing mental energy to overcome emotional eating

Balanced Life Emotional Eating

Being mentally exhausted or overwhelmed are typical reasons for emotional eating and constant snacking during the day. Especially if you work from home and you can easily grab a snack when you feel mentally tired, stressed, overloaded and overworked.

That’s why it’s important to learn to manage our mental energy.

Dieting Diana and Balanced Bianca – from food obsession to food freedom

Emotional Eating Healthy Weight Loss

This blog post introduces the two extremes of my clients’ journey from food obsession to food freedom. The starting point for many of them is food obsession, constant dieting or yo-yo dieting. This state is represented by Dieting Diana.

The goal state is food freedom, which although can be defined in many ways, is simply the opposite of the above. This is what my clients reach after working with me and it’s represented by Balanced Bianca.

NOTE: I taught an entire class on Diana’s and Bianca’s case study (a.k.a. from food obsession to food freedom) and you can watch the replay HERE if you want to know how to become Balanced Bianka.

In this 1-hour class, I talked about 5 of the most common mistakes that dieters (e.g. Dieting Diana) make that drive them to overeat and how to fix these issues (what Balanced Bianca does). Change these and you are on your way to food freedom.
It’s not the same content that you can read here.

Let’s see how these ladies eat, exercise, think, what they believe and how they relate to food and themselves.

Let me introduce you to Dieting Diana

Diana really wants to have a better relationship with food. She would like to look at food as something just to feed her body and get some pleasure from. She doesn’t want it to be her main source of joy, comfort and reward.

She wants to be able to enjoy food and have fun with her friends and family without thinking about what she’s eating or shouldn’t be eating all the time.

She doesn’t want to think about food as something evil that makes her become out of control.

Sometimes it feels like a monster takes over her body, and she can’t stop eating. She doesn’t even enjoy the food anymore but she just keeps eating.

She knows it’s possible to have a healthy relationship with food while also being at a healthy weight, but it seems really far away.

Surprising Connections Between Suppressed Feelings, Stress, Health and Emotional Eating

Emotional Eating

In this blog post, we’re delving into the profound connections between suppressed feelings, stress, health, and emotional eating.

I will show you how the remarkable insights about the relationship between stress and health presented by Dr. Maté also correlate with emotional eating patterns.

You will find my comments and correlation with emotional eating written in Italics.

Breaking free from the fear of failure to overcome emotional eating

Emotional Eating

How the fear of failure may manifest itself in your life

Most of my clients shared the same initial fear before we began our work together: “What if I fail?” They worried about putting in tremendous effort, only to return to square one.

Perhaps you can relate to this cycle of weight loss followed by weight gain, or the frustrating battle with overeating or binging that seems to resurface every few months.

Fear of failure might manifest itself in thoughts and feelings that getting rid of your unwanted eating habits

– is too difficult,

– takes too long,

– is impossible because you won’t have the willpower to do it,

– means that you will have to deprive yourself.

These negative thoughts and feelings will stop you either during the process or might even stop you before you get started.

From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers

Emotional Eating

Many high-achieving, successful people often face the challenge of overeating and emotional eating, even though they excel in other areas of their lives. In this blog post, I introduce the W.I.S.E.R. model as a tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers.

From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers

You’re driven by ambition, you are a successful self-made person but often find yourself struggling when it comes to managing your relationship with food. The pressure of your demanding career, your relentless pursuit of goals, and the constant juggling of responsibilities can lead to heightened stress and overwhelming emotions. Turning to food as a means to numb or distract yourself became your go-to coping mechanism.

However, as you recognize the detrimental effects of emotional eating on your overall well-being, you want to find healthier ways to navigate intense emotions and stress.

In this blog post, I’ll introduce and dissect the W.I.S.E.R. model, offering step-by-step guidance on how to apply it when confronted with intense emotions and the urge to turn to food for comfort. It’s a great tool to manage emotional eating for high-achievers. By the end of this blog post, you will have actionable insights and practical tools to help you navigate challenging moments and cultivate a healthier approach to emotional well-being and eating habits.

Magyar

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Season of Change and Renewal

Comfort in Cozy Foods

Reduced Social Pressure

The Urgency Problem

Reflective Season

Building Resilience

Setting Healthy Holiday Habits

Preparing for the New Year

Ready for Next Summer

Reducing Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)

Developing Healthy Coping Strategies

Conclusion

How having a hobby can help with emotional eating?

Savour Life, Not Food

Loneliness

Boredom

Healthy distraction

Planning activities you enjoy

Which hobbies help to reach freedom from emotional eating?

Journaling

Food journal to uncover your triggers

Brain dumping

Gratitude Journal

Exercise

Meditation

Art and creativity for freedom from emotional eating through hobbies

Why I love Inner Bloom

Let me introduce you to Dieting Diana

How the fear of failure may manifest itself in your life

From Stress to Success: How to Manage Emotional Eating for High-Achievers