Feel your Feelings to End Emotional Eating

Let Me Introduce you to Taylor Carson

This week I have the pleasure of introducing you to a very good friend and colleague who will be guest writing for the No Shoes Blog. Taylor Carson grew up in a small-town North of Edmonton and eventually made her way to Calgary to attend school at the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition and is a Certified Holistic Nutrition Consultant. She studied holistic nutrition and along the way learned the benefits of encompassing wholesome foods and a healthy lifestyle. Taylor later went on to become a Certified Hypnotherapist in Los Angeles, CA because the subconscious mind and mental emotional aspects of everyday life interested her so much. She struggled with emotional eating for years, therefore delving into these areas of nutrition and hypnotherapy were huge growth opportunities for her. Taylor hopes you enjoy this blog about how to feel your feelings, both positive and negative to free yourself from emotional eating.

Let’s talk about eating our feelings.

Who here has ever said something along these lines “Ahh today work wasn’t great, but it’s okay I am hanging out with my girlfriends later and we are going to eat pizza and ice-cream”. What wasn’t said here was “we are going to eat pizza and ice-cream, so I can feel better”. Too often we use food as a physical weapon to conjure a happier feeling within ourselves when things aren’t going well. Most of us were never taught to sit and feel our feelings or understand that if you do have a bad day it’s okay to feel bad. We are scared to feel our feelings and being surrounded by social media where everyone only takes pictures of themselves living their most amazing lives, does not help things. It is completely normal and human to experience negative emotion. In fact, if we didn’t feel negative emotion, science dictates we would all be a psychopaths.

You see, when we don’t take the time to feel negative emotions or positive emotions coming up, we not only are trying to numb ourselves to cover up the problem, we also create events that trigger us to feel emotions so that the feeling can come up and be felt.

In the case of food, and the example above, the negative emotion that is wanting to come up after a bad day at the office is glossed over and numbed by food, creating an artificial feeling of happiness. That sounds all well and good, but then we start to feel guilty about the pizza and ice-cream we ate. Most people continue to go down the rabbit hole and decide to eat more food to cover up the guilt and the cycle goes on and on. During this entire process most of us have very successfully managed to make ourselves feel so guilty and bad about eating food that we are distracted from the main issue going on, which is “I’m not happy at work”. When we are so obsessed about how much we over ate, or how perfectly we ate that day it most often creates a series of negative emotions that ends with beating ourselves up.

Although feeling guilt from overeating food is a tough emotion to feel, feeling unworthy, unlovable, undesirable and unsupported are even bigger emotions that serve as the roots for all other negative emotions. When we are beating ourselves up and feeling guilty about our eating choices, it serves as a great distraction mechanism from what is really going on as well as a protection mechanism, because we think we shouldn’t feel negative emotions. The whole process of eating to cover up emotions and then temporarily feeling good from the comfort of food is a great diversion.

I realize that feeling your feelings to stop over eating may not be the most exciting topic, but it is a crucial one. Let’s look at children. When children or babies have a problem, the whole world knows about it. They cry, they pout, they get angry, they storm off. Not even a whole 5 minutes later it is like that entire tantrum never existed. This is a perfect example of feeling our feelings. Once we feel our feelings or let it out either by talking to a loving supportive friend or journal (just a few adult ideas to get feelings out), we have felt the emotion, expressed it and let it go. Much like the young baby who throws a tantrum. This event/emotion no longer has to haunt you, nor does it require any energy to be suppressed.

If you take the time to feel emotions that come up, whether it’s how you feel when your mother-in-law says a demeaning comment, or your boss criticizes you in front of your co-workers, when you feel the feeling it has space to just be there and you know it’s completely okay to be there. Its normal, its human. When you truly get this, you will start to realize you no longer need food to elicit a happy emotion to cover up the negative one. This can really be a game changer when it comes to your relationship with food and over eating.

I hope this helped. Let me know your thoughts on emotional eating! I would love your feedback.

Do you want to get even healthier? Is emotional eating stopping you from living to your fullest? Are you tired of feeling the guilt and negative emotions that come with emotional eating? Curious about how health coaching can help you on your journey to optimal health? Let’s talk! Schedule an initial complimentary consultation with me today—or pass this offer on to someone you care about! Visit www.noshoesnutrition.com and sign up for a FREE consultation.  I work with people from all over the world individually or in groups so don’t let anything hold you back!