Unlocking Food Freedom: Empowering Emotional Eaters to Rediscover Peace with Food

Unlocking Food Freedom: Empowering Emotional Eaters to Rediscover Peace with Food

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It’s time to unlock a new way of being with food. Embrace a more sustainable approach to eating that empowers you to end emotional eating and rediscover peace with food.

This is your moment to make a difference in your own life. Move out of the never-ending cycle of dieting, losing weight, gaining weight, and feeling bad about yourself.

The dieting mindset is ever present in our society.

It is socially expected, even in families, to diet when we have gained weight, when we overeat, or we do not like how our bodies look.

The way out of this diet cycle is to get back in touch with your body (you knew how to eat when you were born).

We were trained by the enormous diet machine (hello $276 billion dollar diet industry) to continue to hate ourselves and how we look.

I help my clients recognize the power of diets in their lives.

We look at their history of dieting.

It is a powerful tool to explore the question- do diets really work?

One assignment I have for my clients is to write down:

  1. How many diets you have been on?
  2. How successful were you?
  3. How old were you when you started?
  4. Who encouraged you?
  5. Why did you start?

The answers to these questions can give you some powerful information about your experience in diet culture.

After you look at your history of dieting, the next important clue is to look at what part emotions play in your overeating.

Truthfully, much of overeating can be correlated with emotions.

Food has become a way of soothing yourself and feeling better.

The problem is food is not meant to be your ongoing tool to feel better or to self-sooth.

In general, when you overeat and emotionally eat, you start dieting. Dieting has been the only option we have been told about.

Moving from diet to diet to take care of our emotions. You might feel good at first when you are losing weight, but that does not last, AND it is not the way to manage feelings.

What you need is to learn what emotions are trying to tell you. How can you do that?

  1. Name the feelings.
  2. Embrace what the feelings are telling you.
  3. Utilize proven techniques to deal with your emotions.

My clients become able to recognize their feelings and name them. They see how powerful this is and it then helps them to then decide what to do (rather than overeating). The way to move through sadness can be very different than if we are angry. Learning and using your personal ways to move through feelings is critical and moves food out of the position of taking care of feelings.

One exercise you can do is to look at what feelings are leading you to overeat.

A second exercise is to make a list of what can help you when those feelings show up (and they always do).

Another critical area to look at along with diet mindset and emotional eating is what are your thoughts telling you.

Recognizing the thoughts that lead you to overeat is critical.

People allow their thoughts to go unchecked.
Learn what your thoughts are that get you off track and lead you to overeat.

Getting a handle and understanding my thoughts has been a gamechanger for me, in terms of overeating. I used to have a thought about eating and I would ruminate on food. In the end I thought I had no other choice than to overeat. The thought in my head said, “You know you are going to eat it, just do it and get it over with.”

I work with my clients to lessen their negative thoughts. Here are some questions to consider:

  • What thoughts lead you to overeat?
  • What do you do to lessen those thoughts?
  • What can you do to pivot off those thoughts?

I know about overeating, shame, weight issues, and feeling out of control with food.

When will you take an approach that has long term success? If you don’t start now, then when? How many times have you put yourself on the back burner?

Now is the time.

  • Imagine what it would be like to wake up and not wonder what you will eat for the day.
  • Eating food when you are hungry and stopping when you are satisfied.
  • Ending your day and not sitting on the couch and binge.

Join us for the Solution…

I want to invite you to Emotional Eating Solutions, an 8-week self-paced program that takes you through the 6 core components that help you embrace Intuitive Eating.

If you have tried diet after diet and still feel out of control with food, this is the place for you.

Get instant access to Emotional Eating Solutions now and get started on your freedom with food.

Ready to get started? Sign up now.

https://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/emotional-eating-solutions-self-study/

You are going to join at the best time, because we are starting a LIVE round of the program. This means you can go through the course at your pace AND get 8 weeks of support and coaching from me live.

https://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/emotional-eating-solutions-self-study/

Sign up now and get started with the added BONUS of the LIVE round. This is an incredible time to join the program because you will get support with food through the holidays! We start the LIVE round in October.

Sign Up NOW:

https://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/emotional-eating-solutions-self-study/

Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Psychotherapist, Speaker, Author, and Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the best-selling book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration.

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms.

Wondering if you are an emotional eater? Sign up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz.

Overeating Halloween Candy: Have Peace with Food

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Are you overeating Halloween Candy?

Are you afraid to have it in the house because you will overeat it?

Do you wish you did not have to worry about candy?

I have been hearing for weeks that people have bought their BAGS of Halloween candy and have eaten it all!

Overeating Halloween Candy

Has this happened to you?

Possibly you have not bought the candy yet, because you are afraid you will eat it all. I know… you wait until Halloween to buy it, but end up eating way more than you want or you eat (sneak) your kid’s candy.

I have had a love/hate relationship with Halloween and all the candy that goes along with it.

I understand this dilemma, because I used to spend Halloween evening at the gym to avoid buying the candy and worrying that I would eat it all. I was scared of Halloween candy, not the scary costumes!

I decided that I had to make peace with food and especially with candy since my husband and daughter love Halloween: they Trick or Treat while I pass out the candy. I have written about my struggle with Halloween candy on my blogs and will talk about it more on my Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast.

An idea yesterday that I would make available to all of you (and anyone else who signs up) for my  FREE Overeating Halloween Candy: Have Peace with Food video series going over how to have peace with Halloween candy.

Here is what you get:
  • A 6 video series that is short and gives you what you need to deal with Halloween candy.
  • Powerful take aways from the videos as well as doables to get you into action.
  • All of this is my gift to  you when you sign up.

I know  you want peace with food/candy this Halloween.

All you have to do is sign up and the link to the video series will be sent you.

End Emotional Eating

I hope you sign up below.

Peace,
Kim

The Four Hungers

The Four Hungers

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This is a portion of the transcript of from Episode #5 from my Podcast: Feed Your Soul with Kim.

The Four Hungers: What are you really hungry for?

It is painful when you cannot stop overeating, feel bad about yourself and your life.

In this episode, we discuss the different types of hunger that lead you to overeat. Until you recognize the different hungers, you might be eating for reasons other than your physical needs. Did you know there are 4 types of hungers and only one is for food! I call them The Four Hungers.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

In this podcast you will:

  • Learn the 4 different types of hunger?
  • See what clues the different hungers can give you to help you not overeat.
  • Learn how to “feed” those hungers.
  • Come away with a tool to practice now.

Here are some blogs expanding on today’s topic:

What is Emotional Eating:  check out this blog.

Strategy to help you out with your hunger: check out this blog.

Feed Your Soul; Nourish Your Life! The Six Step System to Peace with Food is available. Get it now: https://feedyoursoulunlimited.com/fysnylbook/

Be sure to get your freebie- “Top Tips to End Emotional Eating” at www.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com

Join us on Facebook in our Feed Your Soul Community. Join for free here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1172488142887200/

Want more information? You can find out more about Kim McLaughlin at www.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com

We would love to get your feedback on this show and let us know what you would like to hear in upcoming shows. Email us at info@FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com

If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review for others to find us and share this podcast with a friend.

Kim McLaughlin M.A. is a counselor and a motivational coach working with people who engage in emotional eating or binge eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. If you are in need of services contact Kim McLaughlin here.

Kim is the author of the best-selling book Feed Your Soul; Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food. Learn more about her book here.

Kim McLaughlin has been identified as writing one of the Top 50 Blogs about Emotional Eating by the Institute on Emotional Eating. Sign up for her free Special Report: Top Strategies to End Binge Eating here or visit her website at www.FeedYourSoulTherapy.com.

Ditch the Diet

Ditch the Diet

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This is a portion of the transcript of from Episode #3 from my Podcast: Feed Your Soul with Kim.

It happens twice a year at the New Years and just prior to the summer. At New Years the focus is on losing weight and getting to your goal weight during the year, because they think you cannot be ok with your current size. The sooner the better. In the summer the advertisements focuses on having a bikini body, wearing short shorts, and tank tops. Along with these advertisements about swimsuits, there’s the underlying message that you need to reach a certain number on the scale. That you need to follow a certain diet in order to be that size in order to be “bikini ready.”

What they are telling you through their statements, pictures and imagery is:

  • Happy people are thin people.
  • Sad people are overweight people

This creates a diet mindset that we have all bought into.

How is this a diet mindset?

  1. Thoughts we need to be a certain size.
  2. Societal lack of acceptance of our bodies.
  3. This is a scale driven mindset where we are only satisfied with a certain number on the scale.

We have bought into this mindset, because we were indoctrinated into it. Diets failed you. You didn’t fail.

It’s the strategy of the 2 billion dollar weight loss industry, which includes books, programs, diet food, diet drugs and weight loss surgery. They do this to make money! If diets worked over the long term then we would not need to keep talking about it. The failure rate of diets is 80-90% long term. That is the failure rate! So, that means the success rate long term is 10-20%.

There are many reasons why diets don’t work.

Diets Focus on Deprivation

You are required (in order to be successful) to eat only certain foods on their list in whatever combinations they tell you and don’t eat any other food. There are forbidden foods that you just aren’t supposed to eat. We know that when we are told there are forbidden foods, we want them even more. You feel like you can’t control yourself.

It is the deprivation that sets us up to what we can’t have, which then sets us up for binging, guilt and more dieting.

Diets Make Us Focus on Food All the Time

When are on a diet we are told to look at food 24 hours a day. This makes us think about food all of the time. When you think about it that much, you want it more. What we really want to do is to put food in its proper place as nourishment and look at it as we’re hungry and intuitively determine what we really need.

Diets Lead Us to Think of Food in Terms of Good vs. Bad

I think there is no Good food and no Bad food. Food is food. There is food that gives us energy and food that takes energy away. There is food that makes our body feel good and there is food that doesn’t.

Truthfully, we tend to want what we think are “bad” food, especially when emotions come up. It is so common to hear people state they ate “bad’ food and now they need some kind of punishment (generally exercise or a diet). When we feel upset we generally tend to go towards foods many people would consider “bad”: sweet food, salty food, fatty food, etc. Good food, on the other hand is generally low in fat, low in sugar, and sounds boring and is diet-related.

In Order to “Ditch the Diet”, You Need a Plan

Here are three strategies to help end the dieting mindset.

  1. I suggest you ask yourself this question and journal, “What is dieting to me?” The answer is really individual. For me, dieting is constant hunger, deprivation, and foods are off limits. This is the type of deprivation that leads to rebellion, which leads to overeating at some point. Diets can be the surprise is healthy eating. Ask yourself, do I feel deprived? Do I feel restricted? Does this eating plan lead me to think constantly about food? This is that diet- binge- guilt cycle that comes when we engage in more and more dieting. Let go of the guilt about eating, your weight and the scale.
  2. Are you focused on your weight? Weighing yourself or multiple times a day really leads you into that diet mindset. I recommend you let go of the focus on your weight and let go of the scale. Connect back to your body and self-love.
  3. Eat intuitively connect with your body and mindfulness. Focus on physical hunger: this real hunger is the hunger we want to base our eating on.

I encourage you to look back on your history of dieting and notice the patterns. How does it feel to see your history of dieting and how diets have failed you? This doable is a start in the direction of peace with food.

Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the newly released book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration.

She has recently launched her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim. You can find it on all podcast platforms.

Kim McLaughlin has been identified as writing one of the Top 50 Blogs about Emotional Eating by the Institute on Emotional Eating. Sign up for her free Special Report: Top Strategies to End Emotional Eating here or visit her website at www.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com.

Six Core Components to Feed Your Soul

Six Core Components to Feed Your Soul

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This is a transcript of from Episode #1 from my Podcast: Feed Your Soul with Kim.

In my work as a Psychotherapist and in my Coaching business, I find people are using food for comfort, for recreation, and for ways to connect. The vicious cycle of over-”dieting” and constant “dieting” has really made them feel horrible about themselves. I know, I used to be there myself.  When I began to look at the root-cause of my own overeating, I started to notice a number of things and I came up with a different take on health and wellness. I truly believe the guiding principle in understanding health and wellness centers around living a life where each person feels wonderful, fulfilled, and energized in all areas of their life: Physical, Emotional, Thoughts, Lifestyle, Mindfulness and Self-Love.  By focusing people on creating more balance and peace in their lives as a whole, the food overeating and binge eating are replaced with healthier alternatives in a more natural, stress-free way.  These principles have become my Six Core Components to Feed Your Soul and ultimately they lead to making peace with food.

Balance

It all starts with “balance”. When I think about what’s going on in somebody’s life, I think about the Six Core Components as guideposts to determine whether they’re balanced. So part of this process is asking ourselves, “Am I balanced in my life? Are things balancing out?” in each of the six areas. As I go over these six core principles you can see when you’re out of balance, you’ll be able to see which areas aren’t working for you to feel wonderful, fulfilled, and energized.

What I find fascinating is with everybody I’ve spoken with and worked with on these principles, is that they are never out of balance in just one of the core concepts. They’re never out of balance in just one area, it’s often two, three, four, five, and many times it’s all six areas. People talk to me a lot about wanting to feel “in control” over food or feel like they got it handled, and I think that food issues show up as a way to tell us when we’re out of balance in our lives. That’s the “gift” in food telling us when we’re out of balance.

The Six Core Components & Getting Started

As you read through the Six Core Components below, start imagining how they are fitting into your life or how they’re out of balance in your life and that will give you an idea about what might mean need some work.

Core Component # 1 Physical

Most people with food issues believe when I say “physical” we are only talking about the food we’re putting into our bodies, and I’m not.

In terms of the physical our hormones can affect the balance. When our hormones are out of balance, we feel out of balance in the physical and I think we don’t often consider that, especially for women. In every stage of women’s lives there are hormones that come into play. As young girls, hormones change as they’re entering into menstruation. Then they enter that whole young adult time when they’re getting that balance around having a monthly menstrual cycle. What does that feel like? How does food affect that? Does your body physically feel?  All of that goes on and then some women enter the time of pregnancy and being pregnant,  either having full-term pregnancy or having something happen that ends the pregnancy, either way, being pregnant affects our hormones. Post-pregnancy affects your hormones as well as the time when we enter perimenopause, which nutritionists and medical people say happens around 35. So, around 35 you start then having another change, the perimenopause period, which brings its own challenges. Finally, we go through menopause and post-menopause. Do you see there is this flow throughout women’s lives that is really affected by hormones? What I want you to notice is that physical has to do with food; it has to do with hormones; it has to do with how you metabolize food; it has to do with how your body is physically working. All of that plays into the physical. We will talk A LOT more about the Physical Component in other podcasts- keep listening.

Core Component #2: Emotions

The second component is Emotions. How do emotions affect how we come to the table? How we interact with food sometimes is dictated by our emotions. Emotions make us want to have food, or we THINK it makes us want to have food. Then, food makes us FEEL a certain way. Think of it like this: you have emotions and that makes you want to have a certain food, but sometimes when we eat a certain food, it leads to other emotions that lead us to eat and to overeat. The types of emotions that affect eating the most tend to be anger, sadness, happiness, boredom, loneliness, and anxiety. Those are some of the major emotions that people talk with me about.

When we overeat because of emotions, we’re not coming from a place of really noticing our body. Am I hungry? Am I full? Those questions are from the physical, noticing am I hungry, am I full what is my body really need. When we’re in the emotions how our body feels doesn’t play a part in our decision about what we eat. I find that the more we become connected with our body connected with what’s going on inside physically the more we can have a feeling of empowerment when we have the feelings coming on when the feelings come on it can often feel overwhelming and feel as if we have no control so when we’re having feelings we think we have no control. We will overeat and won’t pay any attention to what’s going on inside. When we eat for emotional reasons it leads to more emotions because then we can tend to feel angry, feel upset, feel overwhelmed, feel sad, because we’ve eaten. When we know that our body didn’t really need what we’re eating and that leads to a big struggle. Can you see when you eat because of emotions and then once you eat you have emotions, because you’re not happy with what you’ve. Emotions play a big part in eating we will talk about that in depth in these podcasts, I promise you.

Core Component #3 Mental

The third component is the mental or the cognitive. The thoughts we have that lead us to overeat. I think about that food I think that I can’t stand myself if I don’t eat. So we eat, because our thoughts are out of balance I used to do that a lot where I would think about the certain food that was in my house and it finally got to the point where I just said to heck with it, I have to eat it because I wanted the thoughts to go away. I wanted the thoughts of that food to leave and at that point of time the only idea I could come up with that would help would be to eat it. I thought if I eat the food the thoughts would go away. Well they did go away immediately the thoughts went away, but then what came on is the feelings of anger at myself that I did that and the condemning of myself and making myself wrong and bad and feeling horrible about myself really leading to lots of feelings of self-hatred because I ate this food only because of the thoughts. We will work a lot on the thoughts. The thoughts play its part in food, but the thoughts play a part in all of our lives. Everybody I talked to no matter if they have food issues or not their thoughts can be out of control. They think their thoughts are real and that they should just act upon them because they have no power over them. I promise you in these podcasts we will talk about thoughts and we will talk about what to do about them specifically. I will give you clues, tools, and techniques doable that you can do immediately to really affect a change on your thoughts.

Core Component #4 Lifestyle

The lifestyle concept encompasses your family, your friends your work, exercise, education, vacations, and holidays. Lifestyle is a huge component we’ll be talking about those a lot most especially when we come near to different holidays. I am a strong proponent of having ideas and plans and really talking through how the holidays and being aware of how they show up in overeating. I have lots of things you can do in regards to the holidays, so I promise you as we come into holidays, as we come into vacation time, I will have specific podcasts focused on those areas.

Core Component #5 Mindfulness

The fifth area is mindfulness, which is so important to assist you to be centered and connected inside of yourself. Some people will really hear when I talked about it will hear more of a spiritual idea about it. It doesn’t have to be about religion it doesn’t have to be about God. If that fits for you good, but it doesn’t have to. It’s about how you feel connected with your inner self and with their higher sense of purpose. I know that people can get out of balance in their connection with their inner self and it shows up in food and overeating, but it can also show up in feeling dissatisfied in your life and feeling unhappy. Being more connected mindfully is one a strategy and a goal that I want to help you with. I want to see you more mindful more connected to yourself and to that guidance that will help you all along the way. It’s one of the most important things you can do is have that inner connection to that greater purpose but also your inner knowing.

Core Component #6 Self-Love

The sixth area is really the most important area and it’s self-love. This area embodies self-love, self-worth, and self-esteem; it’s all of those components together. What I find is that consistently people don’t feel a sense of self love. What I find is more often than not, there’s a sense of self-loathing and self-hatred. The antidote to that is self-love, but we don’t know how to find it we’ve lost our way a lot of times about how do we feel that we’re okay. What people tell me is that they think that if they focus on self-love or self-esteem or self-worth that they’re being selfish. I say yeah bring it on because it’s not selfish in a negative way it’s self-full. It’s being full of yourself. The more you are full of yourself and who you are and who you bring to the table and who you’re meant to be, the more positive you feel the more peaceful you feel.

I promise you the more food will be in balance for you, the more you practice self-love. Sometimes we’ve been so far away from that feeling of self-love that we don’t know any more how to get to that spot. We don’t know how to get to that feeling of self-love. If you are up for more self-love, I’m your girl. I’ve got clues. I’ve got tips. I can help you get there and that’s another piece, big piece of what this podcast is about. We are going to focus on how are we all going to feel the sense of fullness within ourselves, that’s where self-love is critical. You can see I have a lot on my plate in regards to what I want to talk about in these podcasts. I want to give you all of this goodness.

I wanted to set you today in this first podcast to let you know what’s coming. What’s coming is a look at all of these core components. I have big plans for this podcast. If you want to feel empowered with food and your life, this is the place for you, because we will go over self-care tools and self-care techniques to get you moving forward. In order to get more support, I really recommend you go to the free Feed Your Soul Community Facebook page and ask to be added.

I appreciate all of you showing up today for the flagship first podcast and I want to leave you with an idea of looking at all of these six areas that we’ve gone over. Where do you feel in balance? Where do you feel out of balance in the six core components? If you are feeling out of balance than this is the place. Each week we will have a new topic to listen to. Thanks for join us.

Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the newly released book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration.

She has recently launched her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim. You can find it on all podcast platforms.

Kim McLaughlin has been identified as writing one of theTop 50 Blogs about Emotional Eatingby the Institute on Emotional Eating. Sign up for her free Special Report: Top Strategies to End Emotional Eatinghereor visit her website atwww.FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com.