The urge to binge is uncontrollable when food is the all-consuming thought
For those who eat emotionally, mealtime becomes a place to fight urges and feel shameful. Each plate is an uncontrollable monster, tempting the individual to devour it anxiously.
The first impulse to binge or overeat can come days, hours or minutes before. Some people find they plan these times when they know spouses, siblings, parents or significant others will be out of the house. Other times, the craving will come an hour before the have an opportunity to be alone.
Either way, food becomes the ritual that fills up a person inside. The feel nourished by the comfort of the experience, instead of the food itself.
Emotional eating is not really about food. The behavior is eating, but it’s the ritual and habit around the experience that people start to rely on. They feel it’s easier to detach themselves from life in order to depend on the behavior they trust: the ritual.
In eating for reasons outside of physical hunger, individuals begin to lose their appetite signals. People who eat emotionally and compulsively have lost the signal that tells them when they’re finished, so they eat until everything is finished. This cycle leaves them feeling shameful, frustrated and alone.
The only way to begin appreciating food again, or for the first time, is to replace the ritual with something fulfilling. Not another ritual, but by things that truly fill you up.
For most, this means tapping into their spirituality, whether religious or not, in order to fill the void that food is replacing. Ask yourself: what do I need to truly “feed” myself?
The journey to healing from emotional eating can be frustrating. It’s easy to look at all of the times you keep eating without physical hunger and feel angry because you haven’t been abler to stop yourself yet.
You must focus on the times when you choose to do something fulfilling instead of eat emotionally. Those choices will become natural and constant as time goes by, even though you’ll still go back to your old ways during the process.
When you’ve started to heal, ask yourself where you learned to accept and believe it was okay to be nasty to yourself? How were you taught to eat? Maybe a large family left you feeling like you’d never get enough, or a grandmother who would reward you for your accomplishments with food?
By learning your history and why you choose food as a comforter, you can begin to break free from the rituals that bind you to the destructive cycle.
Your body will adjust itself if you listen to its signals. Emotional eating doesn’t have to be your comfort for the rest of your life.
Emotional eating workshops are held by “S” Team Counselling Services, based on Anita Johnston’s Eating in the Light of the Moon.
