Frustrated by your unwanted emotional eating weight gain? Wondering how to get your weight under control when your food cravings are out of control after a bad day, week, or month? If so, these scenarios probably sound familiar…
1: You have a bad day, you’re frustrated, and it’s all you can do to NOT chow down on the entire bag of tortilla chips on the car ride home from work or while scrolling social media before dinner.
2: You’re a woman in perimenopause, your family is driving you crazy, and you soothe your exhausted soul with a pint of ice cream topped with anything chocolate.
3: You hate that you’re gaining weight, so you try to “be good” by eating – a light breakfast, salad with protein and no grains for lunch, no snacks, and a veg stir fry for dinner. Only to find yourself face down in a bag of M&Ms while bingeing Netflix until after midnight.
No matter the scene, you feel the guilt and shame that comes from eating too much sugar or “junk food” – especially when you already struggle to lose the 10, 15, or 20 pounds that came out of nowhere once you turned 40.
Our thin-obsessed culture demonizes emotional eating big time. Often forgetting that eating is emotional.
For example, when you cried as an infant, your caregiver probably gave you a breast or bottle to calm your nerves.
We’re hardwired to self-soothe with food when the shitake of life hits the fan. You’re not broken if you can’t control your cravings after a hard day or stressful week. Just like you’re not broken if you want to celebrate a birthday or holiday with cake and ice cream. There’s also nothing wrong with you if you experience unwanted emotional eating weight gain. You’re human!
And because you’re a human surrounded by diet culture, you’re thinking, “but I can’t do that ALL. The. Time. It can’t be good to just eat anything and everything anytime I want. What about my health?”
Wanting to honor your health, especially during perimenopause and menopause, makes sense. And there are ways that you can honor your well-being without diving into the latest diet trends.
When I first started making peace with food after years of diet-related food restriction and binge eating, the emotional eating piece felt like a boulder I’d never get over.
I’d swing from one forbidden food to another…cookies, chocolate, granola, chips, trail mix, hiking bars, and ice cream (only in the summer, it’s not my thing when the weather’s cold). I tried desperately to allow myself full permission with food, only to have life happen and be right back to bingeing again (followed by restricting).
After months, even years with some foods, I started noticing the emotions or life situations that triggered the urge to shove any of the off-limits, only once-in-a-while foods into my mouth without thinking about it – totally on autopilot, emotionally checked out.
Hear me when I say, this isn’t a how-to-stop emotional eating post where I’m about to tell you to go for a walk, take a shower, call a friend, or play with a pet to distract yourself.
I’m a firm believer in food being part of your emotional coping toolbox. It just can’t be the only tool. Because if it is, food will quickly lose its short-lived effectiveness.
One of the key strategies in the SAVOR Strategies of Healing that I teach my clients, group participants, and students is Variety. It’s essential to get in a variety of foods most of the time and it’s essential to have a variety of emotional coping tools in your coping toolbox.
Think of your emotional coping toolbox as an emergency preparedness kit. Most emergency kits will have blankets, flashlights, extra batteries, non-perishable food, radio, water or water treatment tablets, matches, other fire starters, etc.
You can create an emotional coping toolbox the same way by thinking about what behaviors or activities have felt comforting in the past (including food). Here are some tools to consider adding to your emotional coping toolbox:
- Journal or blank pieces of paper
- Pens – markers and gel pens
- Art supplies if artistic self-expression helps you process emotions
- Your favorite playlist
- Gardening gloves or small gardening tools
- Walking shoes
- Favorite lotion or essential oils or candles
- Tea
- Yoga mat
- Weighted blanket
- Detailed coloring book with colored pencils
- Other ideas?
Once you have a variety of items in your emotional coping toolbox, create a list of those items so you won’t have to think about what tool to grab when you’re in emotional distress.
Now here’s the really important part.
Making a list is great, but unless you know why you put those tools in your emotional coping toolbox, they won’t be as effective.
To understand the why behind each of the tools, think about the difficult emotions you feel most often and what triggers those emotions. It may be helpful to work through this activity with a mental health counselor or therapist.
Think about the qualities of each of the tools and how using them helps you to feel calmer and more present in your body.
For example, think about a butcher block of knives. There’s usually a chef’s knife, serrated knife, paring knife, and maybe a general utility knife. Each one of those knives has a different quality – size, type of blade, etc.
If you want to make a chopped salad but grab the pairing knife instead of the chef’s knife, it’s going to take a lot longer to prepare the salad because the pairing knife isn’t as efficient as the chef’s knife when you need to chop full-size vegetables.
Another example. You might feel emotional comfort by writing in a journal, but it might take you longer to fully move the difficult emotions through your body (completing the stress cycle as described in Burnout by the Nagowski sisters) compared to going for a brisk walk or pulling up weeds in your garden.
Once you build an emotional coping toolbox with tools that calm you in very specific ways, you’ll find that food doesn’t have to do all the emotional heavy lifting in your life.
Will you still be an emotional eater? I hope so. That’s part of what makes food pleasurable and satisfying. But with a variety of tools to help process difficult emotions, you won’t have to rely on food to cope when what you really need is to dance it out to your favorite playlist or lay on the floor practicing deep belly breaths.
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