Do you struggle with emotional eating? Binge eating? I’ve been there.. more times than I care to admit. I’ve worked with many clients that struggle with this as well. So here are two things you should never do after you emotionally eat and one thing you should do.
Let’s say you get home from a really long day and you rummage your cabinets to the point you aren’t hungry or don’t feel like you deserve dinner..
Or you stay up after you put your kids to bed and you go through a whole bag of chips or crackers..
Maybe you go out to dinner with your friends and after several drinks (or not) you eat ALLLLL the chips and queso and you just feel horrible about it..
Or even an entire weekend or vaca of going balls to the walls eating anything and everything you want and that Monday you just feel the need “clean up” your diet and go back to being strict..
The first thing I recommend NOT doing is glossing over the time(s) you emotionally eat.
When you pretend it never happened or just move past it you don’t give yourself the opportunity to learn anything from it. You don’t get a chance to examine why you made the choices you did. Ignoring the issue will never help you change anything.
The second thing I recommend NOT doing is judging yourself for your choices.
Living in hate, judgement and regret are also not going to help you, they’re just going to make you defensive and cause you to experience emotions that are not conducive to learning. Think of all the times you have been asked to do something nicely vs when someone TELLS you to do something.. which time are you most likely to take action?
What I do recommend is trying to learn from the situation and grow from it.
When you do emotionally eat or binge it, there’s a reason and you need to find out what that reason is, because until you get to the root of the issue you cannot truly change anything. You need to ask yourself questions like..
How was I feeling leading up to the binge?
What were my thoughts?
Where was I emotionally and what were my stressors?
What else could I have done in the situation?
How could I have slowed down and made a choice that honored my goals?
Perhaps your work day was really rough and you came home and rummaged the cabinets. Could you have come home, taken a deep breath, recognized your emotions and rather than try to eat to ignore them? Maybe instead of eating you start journaling. Or maybe you were just really hungry so instead you have a snack before leaving work.
If you stay up late night drinking wine and snacking, is there a chance you are actually just really tired? Could you start checking in with yourself before committing to opening the bottle or bag to see what it is you truly need?
Or if you are the cheat meal/ weekend/ vaca binger, perhaps you just need more foods that bring you joy Monday – Friday? Are you really restrictive all week so when you give yourself the chance to be lenient the flood gates open and you can’t stop? If that’s the case, why are you being so strict and what’s that actually doing to serve you when you just end up binging?
Then I want you to ask yourself how you felt when it was said and done and was it worth it? And then ask yourself what you could do differently?
Ultimately nothing is going to change until you examine these things and learn from the situations.
And if you keep doing this and getting into your own way, you won’t be able to achieve your goals and will continue to have a poor relationship with food.
But if you are ready to change these things and achieve your goals and have a healthy relationship with yourself, food and your body, I can help you. This is truly what I love helping my clients overcome in #Commit2Fit. So head to commit2fitcoaching.com to see if this is right for you and let’s get started!
You deserve to move past this and live in a way that you can have joy and happiness, eat in a balanced way and achieve your goals!
Your Coach,
Kyra