Month: January 2024

It can be helpful to develop awareness of what you are experiencing in the moment you feel pulled to eat in a way that does not support your weight loss goals, such as eating unhealthy foods or emotionally eating. The moment you experience an urge to emotionally eat is a moment of profound choice. It can be very difficult to pause at the urge without acting on it. Time and practice are key here, along with a willingness to be with the discomfort of cravings and eating urges. The skill you must develop is to notice what is happening to you emotionally without reacting habitually.

The next time you experience an urge to eat in a way that does not support your weight loss goals PAUSE AND OBSERVE:

• The feelings that are present for you
• The thoughts, memories, or mental images coming up for you
• Physical sensations you feel inside and outside your body
• Urges to do or not do something (which in this case is typically an urge to eat: to eat something unhealthy, to eat in response to negative emotions, to eat to avoid, to overeat, etc)
• Your Moment of Choice…to do something other than eat in a way that does not support weight loss

As a start, you might just increase your awareness of that Choice Moment, even if you still choose to eat. Just start to increase your awareness that you do have a choice in how you respond to urges to eat and to cravings. Overtime, start to make a different more support and healthy choice. You can develop a list of alternative things you can do. When developing this list, it can be helpful to first have an understanding of the role your unhealthy eating plays, so that the alternative activity you choose can also meet that need for you. Maybe at times you eat as a way to soothe yourself or to avoid: activities that effectively meet these needs may be different. Regarding ‘avoidance’, while distracting activities can be helpful in the short term to break the overeating habit, in the long term it can be helpful to do more inner work around what it is you avoid and why, which is beyond the scope of this blog post.

Reflect on the role your interpersonal relationships have on your eating. Consider the impact of work relationships, family, romantic partners, and friends. An interpersonal relationship is one you have with other people, and these can play a significant role in overeating. This is especially true when these relationship dynamics fuel a negative emotional state. Ask yourself:

• Are there certain people or certain social situations that seem especially triggering for you?
• What is it about these people or situations that is especially difficult for you?
• Can you change anything about these relationships or how you interact with these people?
• What about these people and relationships can you work to tolerate and accept?
• What are some skills that might support you?

Having healthy relationships with other people is an important element in being able to overcome overeating. Nurturing supportive relationships with others can involve setting boundaries, letting go of people, and challenging ourselves to look within at our own role in any disharmony.

You use food to cope with negative emotions because it works. You Eat The Thing and for a moment, you feel better. The negative emotions that drive you to use food are likely influenced by challenging interpersonal relationships and/or negative self evaluations or self criticism. Both of these— challenging social relationships and self criticism— block your ability to experience positive emotional states. How you experience troubling inter and intra personal relating is unique to you. We can explore these inner experiences using parts of self. I describe a process of inner parts and how they contribute to emotional eating here. You may also have an inner part that is very controlling, which likely functions as a defense against the unknown and/or a way to avoid painful feelings such as shame and rejection. Basically, there is a part of you that is criticizing/controlling and a part that is being criticized/controlled. This dynamic results in a negative emotional state that may either be acute or pervasive in your experience. This stew of negative emotions— which include thoughts, feelings, physical sensations, and urges— ultimately lead to decisions to eat emotionally. Using food to cope is a choice you make and therefore can change.

Being able to sit with, tolerate, and effectively respond to negative and uncomfortable emotional states is key to you changing your emotional eating behaviors. You likely experience more episodes of emotional eating when you are in a negative mood state. This process can also be explored using inner parts of self as described in the above-linked blog post. Right now, the part of you that steps in to help the vulnerable, hurting part of yourself is misguided in using emotional eating to help manage negative emotional states. It seems to work— it reduces the negative emotional state— but it’s not effective in helping you reach your weight loss goals. Therefore, a key element in being able to refrain from emotional eating when in a negative mood is to be able to identify and choose a healthier and more effective response.

Another important element to overcoming emotional eating is the physiology of food. Eating foods high in refined carbohydrates, added sugar, and inflammatory oils will not support weight loss efforts. Hyperprocessed foods are designed to elicit overeating. So, it’s equally important to set yourself up for success by choosing a diet full of real whole food. A mediterranean diet pattern is a good starting point.

So, take some time to reflect on the role emotional eating plays in your life. Review the above-linked blog post and map out your inner parts of self and how they interact to drive your emotional eating behaviors. What part of yourself emotionally eats, and why? What purpose does it serve for that or any other part? What is it in response to? What part of yourself is contributing to negative emotional states? What is your self-talk in those moments? Do you use emotional eating as a way to manage and deal with certain people, circumstances, or emotions? Try to understand the patterns and cycles of emotional eating within your life and within yourself. Separate out each step in the emotional eating process and define how those inner parts of your own self interact to drive your negative self-evaluations, self-criticism, negative emotions, and emotional eating behaviors.

Start to consider a healthier part of yourself you can begin to work towards strengthening. At what point would this part of yourself intervene? How might strengthening this part of yourself change your emotional eating process?

I know, I know: you’ve probably been trying to lose weight for awhile. You’ve done all the diets, and maybe you’ve even found some success. But inevitably, your old habits creep in and you end up gaining weight, giving in to food, struggling against cravings that feel overwhelming. People are challenged by different obstacles when it comes to finding long term weight loss success. Let’s get a sense of where you are in terms of your willingness to engage in the process of losing weight for good— right now. Maybe have some pencil and paper and write your answers in a journal.

Why do you want to lose weight?

Consider that there’s a part of you who wants to lose weight. And, there is a part of you who does not want to lose weight. WHATT??? I can imagine you reading that in disbelief that part of you in fact does NOT WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT, and it’s because of this part that you continue to struggle in your long term change efforts. Think about it: if *all of you* were on board in wanting to lose weight and maintain that loss over the long term, you’d have done it by now. The fact that you have not been able to do so is because a part of you does not want to. In general, do you continue to do things you don’t want to do? Probably not. Losing weight is no different.

Find out why this part of you does not want to lose weight. Another way of framing this question is to look at the behaviors that underlie your weight loss process and develop an understanding of how you benefit from engaging in certain behaviors and/or refraining from others. ‘Weight loss’ is a complex process comprised of many, many micro-behaviors. Elements of being overweight, and being overweight in and of itself, may be rooted in your sense of identity, who you fundamentally take yourself to be. This is another reason it can be helpful to think in terms of parts of yourself. You contain multitudes and are not defined by any one part of yourself.

I probably don’t know you, but I’m pretty sure you have a general sense of the things you need to do to lose weight and the habits you engage in that prevent you from losing weight.

Take a few moments to consider what advantages being overweight has for you, how it might be helpful for you. Maybe take on the perspective of the part of you that doesn’t want to lose weight, and try to understand your struggles with weight loss from its perspective. Some reasons include:

• Being overweight is just part of your identity
• You get to eat what you want, when you want
• Overeating/eating what you want helps you avoid difficult feelings
• Overeating/eating what you want helps you reduce stress
• Overeating/eating what you want is familiar
• Overeating/eating what you want feels comforting
• Your current way of eating soothes you
• You don’t have to deal with resistance to changing food patterns from people you live with
• The results of changing to a new way of eating are uncertain
• You current eating patterns help you escape from negative thoughts
• You have disempowering beliefs about your ability to manage a new way of eating, and sticking with your current way of eating allows you to avoid that uncertainty and discomfort
• You’re tired and having a craving, which feels uncomfortable, and you’ve had a stressful day. Overeating/eating what you crave allows you to escape these uncomfortable sensations, thoughts, and feelings
• You’d rather do other activities instead of prep and plan healthy meals

Of course, you also have many reasons you want to change. It can be helpful to think of this as another part of yourself. When you are doing well with the changes you want to make, this is the part of yourself who is present. And when you give in to old habits and self-sabotage, the other part of yourself is present. To succeed at losing weight, you must honor and acknowledge the part of yourself who does not want to lose weight, with full awareness that being overweight offers you some advantages.

You get to ultimately decide if it’s worth it to you to change. In changing, you can learn new skills and new ways of coping and being that can contribute to your long term success, finally. This can be considered a different part of yourself that you will be developing.

Interested in working with me in one on one consulting to FINALLY reach your weight loss goals? Reach out: tovaabelmancoaching@gmail.com