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:
How many diets you have been on?
How successful were you?
How old were you when you started?
Who encouraged you?
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?
Name the feelings.
Embrace what the feelings are telling you.
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.
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.
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.
If you look anywhere on the internet you will hear about the stress of the holidays. I wondered what you are think about stress over the holidays, so I asked.
I ran a survey asking:
Do you need strategies to support you with food and all the overwhelm this holiday season?
A whopping 86 percent said yes, they need strategies with food and all the overwhelm this holiday season. I was struck by how large the number was, 86%. It is not that you just have stress and overwhelm, but you do not know what to do about it!
That is a lot of people!
This stress and overwhelm can show up as:
Loneliness
Family drama
Money problems
Overeating
Normal routines are gone, due to the increased activities
Unreasonable expectations
Loneliness can be so devastating and unexpected at the holidays. There are movies and songs about being surrounded with others. What if you have been wronged by family members, they are not people you want to be with, or they simply live nowhere near you. You could be unhappy with people in your family, unwilling to see them, setting boundaries on them. Even with boundaries there can be loneliness. There is the expectation that we will want to be with family, but that might not be the case.
A strategy for loneliness is to be with someone. Who is someone you like or feel close to? Someone you might want to reach out and say hi to? Who is it you enjoy spending time with? Reach out to them. You might be surprised at their response.
Another strategy to curb loneliness is by spending time with a pet. This can be just the right opportunity to feel close without the expectations of others.
Family drama is very common. Do you feel you have to see family members you do not feel close to, do not feel connected to or maybe you just do not like them? There is the air of expectation that you want to be with people you are related. It is stressful and overwhelming to try to be around people you think you are supposed to be around.
A strategy to deal with family drama is to be gentle with yourself. You are the only one who knows what is right for you. When there is family drama it can be so helpful to set boundaries. If needed, say no to what you need to say no to. This is your life to live.
Money is a huge issue during the holidays. There are expectations we are supposed to buy things for others. You might feel the expectation to buy something out of your price range or you just don’t have the funds for it this year. That is super stressful.
A strategy is to focus on what you are grateful for. It quickly changes your heart and mindset to the positive. This will not bring you money, but it will change your attitude. Remember, there is no requirement that you need to buy things for others.
Overeating is another problem that leads to overwhelm and stress over the holidays. There are so many foods we do not have at other times of the year that are so inviting. We can either go all in and eat everything or say no I will not have any of it. This can become a feast or famine time of year. Often people decide to feast (overeat) during the holidays and famine (diet) at the new year. This leads to stress about weight, fullness, and self-loathing.
There are many strategies to deal with food in a productive way over the holidays.
First, notice what foods you really want and have them. Yummy foods are delicious and there are many seasonal items.
Second, go easy on yourself. There are so many emotions and mixed priorities during the holidays that stress increases.
Third, get support from people who do not focus on dieting. Get valuable tips and strategies to look at food differently. I would suggest that you join us in the Peace with Food over the holidays program (it is very affordable and supportive).
Normal routines are gone over the holidays. Travel, guests, and schedule changes create a different schedule than what you are used to. This increases stress in our bodies.
One strategy is to keep your bedtime routine as close to normal as possible. Good sleep is critical to end overeating and to keep stress and overwhelm down. This sounds like such a simple suggestion, but it really works!
Lastly, there are so many unreasonable expectations we put on ourselves or put on us by others. These expectations take us away from our needs and wants. Possibly you do not even know what you need or want.
A strategy is to take some time to determine what you want to do or be over the holidays and do that. In Peace with Food over the holidays program we talk about determining what you want to do. I call it a Holiday Bucket List. Determine what is right for you and do that. What is the most important thing for me to do?
The holidays are full of stress and overwhelm. Kim has an easy online course designed to fit into your busy schedule and give you some quick wins to feel peaceful during the holidays. Check out Peace with Food over the holidays program. It is a low-cost high value program with quick lessons to get you on track and keep you on track over the holidays.
You eat your emotions? This sounds like a strange question, right. It also means do you eat when you are lonely, angry, tired, sad, happy, or overwhelmed. I am not talking about occasionally eating over your emotions, I mean often.
Emotional eating (or stress eating) is using food to make yourself feel better, eatingto satisfy emotional needs, rather than to satisfy physical hunger. … And you often feel worse than you did before because you feel angry with yourself and you have not addressed true hunger with food.
Recently, I asked my community what their challenges with food were and what they wanted me to talk about. One hundred percent of the people polled said they needed to hear more about emotional eating.
Interestingly, when I talk to people about emotional eating, initially they do not think they are an emotional eater.
They think they just eat because they have not found the right diet or they just like food too much. Once we talk about the ins and outs of emotional eating they resonate with the concept.
One way to determine if you are an emotional eater is to start noticing when do you eat. This can be extremely hard to do. If you have a history of eating mindlessly then noticing feelings that lead to overeating is exceedingly difficult.
Another way to determine if you are an emotional eater is to look at what you are saying to yourself about food. Do you criticize yourself about your food choices and say they are “good or bad foods”? These thoughts engage the part of your brain that wants to stay stuck. Really food is food, there is no good or bad food.
I think it can be helpful to know the basics of the different kinds of hunger, so you can start noticing what might be leading you to overeat.
Basically, the Four Hungers are:
Tummy Hunger- the feeling of hunger in your stomach.
Heart Hunger- this is the emotional hunger.
Mouth Hunger- the yearning for the taste of a certain food.
Head Hunger- the thoughts of food in your head.
As I stated before we are an emotional eater, we mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger. Responding to emotions for our clues to eat, will generally lead us to overeat.
What is the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger?
*Emotional hunger can be strong and can feel overpowering. It’s so easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for to help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart. Start noticing what your body feels like when you are physically hungry. Some of my clues are my tummy grumbles, low energy, mood starts to dip.
*Emotional hunger strikes you suddenly. Bam! It hits you quickly and it feels overwhelming and urgent.
Physical hunger, on the other hand, comes on more gradually, if you are paying attention to it. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t eaten for a very long time).
*Emotional hunger generally turns into mindless eating. You will tend to eat to overfull before you even notice what you are doing. You might have an agreement with yourself that you will only have one or a little, but you end up eating it all.
I hear stories all the time (this is my story too) where you have a container of ice cream and it is gone in one sitting. When you are eating for physical hunger, you can feel in control, conscious and empowered with food.
*When eating from emotional hunger you do not feel satisfied when you are full. You will notice you are full, but not want to stop. This is when we say, “It tastes so good, I did not want to stop.”
When eating from physical hunger, you don’t need to get overfull, because you feel physically satisfied. You have satisfied the physical hunger. You cannot satisfy emotional hunger with food.
*Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach.It is a sense of overwhelm and you cannot get the thought of eating out of your head. You feel compelled to eat, not matter what your physical hunger might say. You cannot talk yourself out of it.
Physical hunger is grumbling in your tummy or a hunger pain. You physically feel this type of hunger, it is not emotional.
Now that you have learned more about emotional eating it can be time to take some action. Here is a step to take NOW:
I know that overeating can be a tough problem and the solution takes one step at a time. The first step is to take the Am I an Emotional Eater quiz. After you have taken the quiz, look at the questions you have said yes to. Could it be that you are an emotional eater? If the answer is, yes, congratulations you are moving in the direction of peace with food.
Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor.
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?
Thoughts we need to be a certain size.
Societal lack of acceptance of our bodies.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Are you an Emotional Eater?
You have tried every diet imaginable. Let's figure out what drives you to overeat.
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Interestingly, when I talk to people about emotional eating, initially they do not think they are an emotional eater. 
