Have you ever noticed that many people gain weight and turn to emotional eating during really high stress, tough times in their lives when facing big changes?
Think about a heartbreaking loss of a loved one and the dark days filled with grief, exhaustion and tears coping with their death
Did you feel fear and anxiety when you were forced to change jobs?
Were you losing sleep over the worry and uncertainty of being unemployed?
Have you felt helpless, depressed and gloomy over a fractured or broken relationship?
If you were fired from your job, did you feel a mixture of panic, anger, relief, fear and sadness?
Can you relate to feeling revulsion, rage, resentment and shame if you were betrayed, rejected or abandoned by a friend or lover?
Lots of emotions. I’m guessing that like me, when you face intense situations, the feelings in your body during those times are just so overwhelming and stressful that you can’t think straight. You may have found yourself overeating.
All those times you ate more and gained weight, may have made you feel really badly about yourself, even though you didn’t do anything wrong.
I used to beat up on myself constantly whenever I overate and gained weight. That habit came from years of living as a kid with my then well-meaning, but very fat phobic father. He and my step mother, Rosie were very concerned that I gained 30 pounds in less than a year.
Perhaps you can relate to being sexually abused as a kid, turning to food and gaining weight. I did that same thing. While everything around me was in chaos I knew I could count on eating something sweet to make me temporarily forget how I felt so helpless. As I became an adult I never realized the reason why I kept cheating on my diet was because I thought of food as love and comfort. Eating just made me feel safe.
In fact for decades I swore I had no self-control and I was certain that I couldn’t trust myself around food. And during all those years when I was a dieter going to Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Diet Center or making huge pots of cabbage soup trying desperately to lose weight I never once thought that eating food was my way of taking care of myself. It was my way of creating comfort and safety for myself during the many emotional, physical and financial storms in my life. Perhaps you can relate.
During those chaotic times, as much as you want to, you can’t seem to reverse the trend of gaining weight and feeling awful. There’s just so much going on in your life that you don’t know where to start to make changes. You know you don’t want to diet, but you have no clue of what it means to get healthy without dieting and harsh exercise.
You may wonder, “Is there another way?” Is it possible to change my eating habits and be more active without being so hard on myself?
Yes. There is and I’ll tell you all about it. Back in 2005 I created a program called Losing Weight without Dieting. Over the next several years I shared the insights that I was learning about non-diet weight control with several groups of women in a live 7 week program that included private and group coaching by me.
If you consider yourself an emotional eater, you can probably relate to feeling like you’ve failed at diets.
But in truth, diets have failed you. I’ll bet that by now, you’ve probably noticed that with all the dieting you’ve done over the years
you are actually heavier than when you started. That’s because your excess weight is not due to
lack of self-control or laziness. It’s just a symptom.
Weight issues are as a result of a lack of self-love.
Your body is brilliant and knows how to be healthy. If overeating has led to weight issues, there’s no shame in that. Overeating is our heart’s way of trying to fill an emotional reservoir that feels empty. But no matter how out of balance you have felt for whatever length of time you have experienced it, you can come back into a sense of balance and harmony with your body. You can reprogram yourself to relax around food so you can eat what you want and get satisfied consuming smaller portions.
Here’s an example of what I mean by getting back in balance with your body. When you go to the gas station to
put gas in your car, you don’t fill the tank past the point of overflow. And then once your tank is full, you don’t put gas in the
back of the car or carry it around with you in a coffee cup. If you choose to fill your gas tank
the limit of the tank is the maximum amount of gas your car can hold. Your stomach is the same. There is just a certain amount of space in your body for food. And it’s not very large; just a couple of cups of volume. But it’s our emotions that fool us into thinking we’re always hungry when we’re not.
Research has shown that for more than 93% of people who lose weight on diets, they regain their weight and more within less than 5 years. The reason for the weight gain is the restrictive nature of the diets. The sad truth is dieting just won’t work. That’s because diets don’t teach us how to deal with the emotions that compel us to eat when we’re not hungry. And probably worst of all, diets keep you thinking that you are helpless because they are a constant reminder of the dynamic between you and the judgmental authority figures in your life asserting
their opinions and telling you what you can and can not do. I’ll bet that brings out the rebel in you.
I’m sure you’d agree that when you try to follow a weight loss plan that puts the kabosh on
certain foods that you love, your cravings for those foods drag you around by the nose. Despite all
attempts to stay on program, it doesn’t matter, the cravings will get you every time. Before you
know it, you’re giving in, eating the food and feeling miserable, overcome by guilt and promising
to get back on the wagon and ‘be good’ on your diet the next day. Stop putting yourself through that torture!
Intuitive Eating: A Non-Diet Weight Control Alternative
There is an alternative to dieting called Intuitive Eating. Have you ever watched a baby being nursed or bottle fed? Perhaps
you’ve noticed that infant turn their head away at some point during the feeding. That’s because
the baby is paying attention to the feeling of fullness in their little tummy. The infant is listening to their body’s
hunger signals. By turning their head, they are honoring their body’s sense of fullness and satisfaction.
We all have that same ability to listen to our bodies, eat when we are hungry and stop when we
are satisfied. However after years of dieting, you may have learned to mistrust your body and
ignore the sensation of hunger. You may have been given the message that your hunger is insatiable.
And it’s very likely that you were encouraged to eat very frequently and fill up on low cal foods
to prevent yourself from getting too hungry. But your hunger is a natural thing and it’s really nothing to fear.
It really doesn’t matter how long you have dieted, or have been watching your weight,
you can get that awareness of your body back again.