Home Archive by category 'Recovery' (Page 2)

Recovery

  • Binge Eating, Body Image, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love

    How Life Has Changed Since Stopping Emotional Eating

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    This morning I woke up naturally, no buzzing sound of alarm calling me to ‘get my ass to the gym’, I rolled over and lay there for a while, took a few breaths and smiled to myself.

    This sounds like the start of a cheesy film…perhaps it is. And I am grateful for that. Because never in a million years did I ever think this could be my life.

    If you’ve been following along this blog for a while and have read ‘my story’ (find it here) then you will know I put myself through absolute hell with my diet and my body. And today all I feel is gratitude for this amazing life I have. This amazing life that I fought for myself to have.

    I was once that girl who appeared to ‘have it all’ – the job, the apartment, the relationship, the money, the clothes, the bags, the holidays…..the body.

    Everything looked amazing on the outside. But what I remember about being that girl wasn’t any of that. What I remember about being that girl were the endless nights I was doubled over in pain after eating a huge takeaway meal, family sized bag of crisps, a packet of biscuits, half a chocolate cake, a tub of ice cream, sharing bags of sweets and taking laxatives on top of that to try and ‘flush’ it out so I didn’t ingest the calories.

    I remember waking up the next day after 2 hours of sleep feeling like I’d been hit by a truck then putting on my gym clothes and my running watch and heading out for an hour long slog down the Thames, dragging my feet along, willing my legs to carry me. I remember wishing away the hours during the day at work or with friends so that I could be at home on my own and eat.

    The only thing I remember enjoying was shopping for my binges. My greatest joy in life was getting to go to the supermarket after work and spending inordinate amounts of money on snacks and treats. I would tell myself that I would only eat half when packets of cakes were on buy one get one free offers. That it was more cost effective for me to buy the biggest packets of crisps because I would eat them at some point anyway…knowing full well I could never stop mid-packet. I would play games with myself that because I had exercised and hadn’t eaten all day it was ok for me to devour 4000 calories worth of chocolate fudge brownie cake and ice cream.

    My emotion-fuelled binges consumed my whole life. The sadness and helplessness that enveloped my entire life was suffocating. I look back and all I remember were hazy moments of peace found mid-binge when the sugar had started to hit and I knew I still had so much more to eat. The rest of my life was covered by a huge black cloud.

    To say my life has changed is the world’s biggest understatement.

    It couldn’t be more different.

    Here’s a few of the ways my life has transformed –

    🌟I eat whatever food whenever I want and NEVER feel guilty

    🌟I enjoy ALL foods – yes, including veggies!

    🌟I exercise because I enjoy it

    🌟I love my body unconditionally

    🌟I am WAY more fun to be around

    🌟I have time to do things I enjoy

    🌟I am the happiest I have ever been

    🌟I LOVE my life

    Tell me you don’t want more of all that for yourself?

    Hand on heart, what do you want for yourself? If you had a fairy godmother who could give you one wish right now what would it be? Tell me honestly that you wouldn’t want to feel happier in your life?

    You don’t need a fairy godmother – you can be your own fairy godmother and grant yourself that wish right now. All you need to do is take one step forward and say ‘I need support to move through this transition, to quit the crazy eating behaviours’. Raise your hand and say ‘I know I can do this, I know what I need to do and I know with someone by my side I will do it’.

    I’ve got your back. I am asking for your permission to be there for you. I can and I will support you through this. All you need to do is say yes…

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  • Binge Eating, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Self Love

    Emotional Eating As Punishment

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    Have you ever felt like you just ‘need’ to eat that piece of cake?

    You KNOW it’s emotional, you KNOW it has something to do with things other than your hunger but it doesn’t matter, you just ‘need’ it anyway?

    If you’re reading this then I guess you have been there. A. Lot.

    You have felt that urge to ‘treat yourself’ and you are damn well going to go ahead and do just that.

    What is really happening here?

    I have written extensively on how we use food to hide from our feelings, see these blog posts here and here for more. But what is this use of food actually signalling?

    It is not just that we want to hide from our feelings. it can be something a little more sinister and confusing and therefore a little harder to overcome on our own.

    Much of the time our emotional eating stems from the fact that we do not feel worthy or lovable and we seek comfort in food. We also have beliefs that thin people are more worthy, loved and therefore happier than us.

    So when we emotionally eat we actually hitting ourselves with a double dose of self-hatred. We are eating in such a way that we are punishing ourselves for 1) having feelings of unworthiness and 2) not being thin.

    Let’s dive in to this a little deeper.

    First, we are saying to ourselves that we are unworthy and unlovable and that that pain is too much to bear. We do not want to feel these feelings therefore we will eat instead.

    Second, eating more is a surefire way of moving away from the ‘thinness’ we desperately desire therefore relegating us to a place where we will be ‘fat’ and therefore objectively and resolutely not worthy or lovable…

    What…?!!

    What kind of Jedi mind tricks are we playing on ourselves here…

    There is literally so much warped psychology around our eating patterns that it is not only unhealthy but frankly disturbing.

    When we emotionally eat under any circumstance, no matter how it makes us feel, even if we find it ‘comforting’ what we are really doing is eating to punish ourselves for having feelings. We are also eating as a way of keeping ourselves stuck in a scenario we don’t want to be in.

    Eating as punishment frequently trips us up because we aren’t even tuned in to the fact we are doing it. We think we are being kind to ourselves by ‘indulging’ but unless we have truly freed ourselves from all our diet and food related demons then all we are doing is perpetuating a negative cycle.

    If this sounds confusing….trust me I know. Most importantly, does this sound like a minefield you would like to get yourself out of?

    If yes then comment below or send me an email at sasha@sashafardell.com and let’s chat.

    If you haven’t already check out my FREE TRAINING on how to stop Emotional Eating TODAY – just click here

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  • Body Image, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love

    5 Steps to Effectively Handle Bad Body Image Days

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    You wake up, you feel tired, you look at yourself bleary-eyed in the mirror and that familiar heaviness washes through your body. Staring back is the you of yesterday…but fatter.

    You swear you didn’t look like this last night when you went to bed. Why are your legs all puffy and your face swollen? Why do you have an extra bloated stomach when you haven’t even eaten yet today?

    This my friends is the start of a potential ‘bad’ body image day. I am 100% positive if you are reading this blog that you will know the feelings I just described. There is no way we could have put on a stone overnight but somehow the mirror and our mind is telling us we have. The voice in our heads is screaming at us that we are suddenly too fat again, how did we let ourselves go like this, who is this girl who is so out of control of her life she allowed herself to get this fat?

    None of these things are true. But it doesn’t matter because our mind is going to keep telling us they are until we make the decision not to eat that day or to smash ourselves at the gym or try and get 20,000 steps in or all of the above of course.

    If however we are healing our relationship with food and our body, that is the total opposite of what we’re going to do.

    Here are my best tips on how to handle yourself when you are having a bad body image day

    1.Step away from the mirror

    I’m serious. Move away from the trigger immediately and absolutely under no circumstances think about weighing yourself. Stop analysing your body, in fact don’t even look at it.

    2.Go inside

    By this I mean sit or lie still for a moment and bring your attention to your breath. At this point your mind may still be going crazy. That is ok. Let the thoughts come up. Let them happen and instead of holding on to them, just notice them. By focusing on your breath you are bringing some separation between you and your thoughts. This is vital.

    3.Start saying kind things to yourself that have nothing to do with your body or how you look

    Use “I am” to make it more potent…
    My favourites are, I am a good friend, I am a loving partner, I am fun to be around etc.

    4.Explore how you are feeling

    If you have followed along with this blog for a while you will know this is my favourite tip (and if explored fully probably the only one you need). When you are feeling crappy about your body this is a SIGNAL that something else is going on. It is a signal that there is something in your life that is triggering feelings of unworthiness, not enough-ness, emptiness or loneliness. Things are happening in your sphere which are leading you to feel pain or hurt.
    In order to stop feeling bad about our bodies we need to stop feeling bad about ourselves. This means uncovering what is really making us feel bad.

    5.Be gentle with yourself

    Don’t give yourself extra tasks to do. If you are feeling a little compromised, if your energy is low and you are struggling be extra kind to yourself. Don’t beat yourself up or attempt to do a million things to ‘distract’ yourself. self-care means caring for your self. That means paying attention to her, being kind to her and helping her feel safe when your thoughts are saying do the opposite.

    Ultimately these tips work instantaneously when bad body image days pop up. But ideally we want to aim for none of these days. We want to wake up everyday and not have any negative thoughts about our bodies. Trust me, it is possible! We can get to a place with our bodies where negative thoughts simply don’t enter our minds, or if they do accidentally slip in they slip out so fast we don’t even register, let alone react to them.

    If you want to make this your reality then get on a call with me right now. I know what you need to do and I know how you need to do it. We can absolutely wave good-bye to bad body image days once and for all. Post a comment below or email me directly here sasha@sashafardell.com and let’s banish these negative thoughts for good.

    Like this post? Supplement tip 4. with this blog, with these self-care tools, and these two top tips on how to stop comparing yourself

    Lots of love xx

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  • Body Image, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love

    Your Body Is Not A Commodity

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    In order to sell something that thing has to be useful to someone, it has to have some value, it has to look a certain way, perform a certain way or have certain functions that make it attractive to a particular person.

    We understand this and therefore we set our own expectations and judgements around things, we set parameters around what we like and don’t like and what we value or need. Therefore when it comes to buying things or choosing things for our life we know what we are looking for and we can simply pick them out and away we go.

    The thing about ‘things’ is that they have no feelings, thoughts or emotions. They just exist as they are. They don’t care if you pick them or not. They are not reacting to your judgements and expectations. They are just there and they just are.

    Bodies are not like that. And guess why…

    Because bodies are not ‘things’ bodies are HUMANS. Real life human people.

    When we try to make our bodies a certain way in order to ‘sell’ ourselves to the world we are DEHUMANISING ourselves.

    When we mess with our food through excessive dieting, bingeing or over-exercising we are treating our body as a commodity.

    We are saying to ourselves that our body is an object that must be changed to look or function in a certain way in order for it to be ‘sellable’, i.e. acceptable, to the world.

    This is not necessarily our fault. We have been trained to think about our bodies in this way by a lot of mass market media. We are shown that legs should look long, slim, white and tanned, that waists should be slim and trim and breasts perky and perfectly round. We are told we need to make our bodies look like that in order for people to buy into us as women.

    This is disturbing for many reasons and something that might not change in the media for a while. But something we can change is the way we react to this.

    Ladies, we can say no. We can stand up and say I am a woman and my body is my home. My body is perfect exactly the way it looks naturally. I refuse to cause myself harm through unhealthy behaviours to try and make my body look a specific way.

    This is about reasserting ourselves as whole people. Your body is not something to be judged and scrutinised or compared with an unrealistic ideal. Your body is a living, breathing, moving, sentient being, the home of all your hopes, dreams, wishes and future plans. It is not something to be destroyed, trashed, terrorised all in the name of someone else’s beauty ideal.

    We have a right to live freely and happily in our bodies, exactly as they are. Our bodies are not a commodity.

    TW: For another post on our bodies as home related to sexual trauma check out my post here

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  • Binge Eating, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love

    Emotional Eating is keeping you Invisible

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    For most of my life I was the quiet one. I preferred to observe what was happening rather than let myself join in. My self-criticism was so overwhelming it was debilitating. I didn’t realise that for much of my life I was trying to make myself invisible.

    My relationship with food was my big secret. My personal dieting quests, supermarket binge-food hauls and hours of obsessing over calories were my safe space. These private behaviours were what gave me the confidence to show up in the world. I used them to hide myself so that what I presented was only a very small portion of who I was and how I felt. They helped me create a facade of the person I wanted to be – thin and happy.

    Does any of this feel familiar? Hiding the ‘real’ you behind your eating patterns?

    When we use unhealthy behaviours, when we try to control through obsession and strict adherence to rules it is because we are trying to cope with something. Something in the world has made us feel unsafe – physically, emotionally or mentally – and we are grabbing on to something tangible to bring some semblance of normality to our lives.

    The thing that has made us feel unsafe doesn’t necessarily need to be a massive trauma. But it is something that has shaken us, specifically made us question who we really are and why we are here. Maybe it was a bully in school who told us we were ugly or our parents ignoring us when we asked for help. The result of these experiences though makes us feel like there is something inherently wrong with us. We believe that as a result of who we are we are flawed. This makes us want to be small…for me it made me want to disappear completely. I perfected becoming invisible. I could be in a group with everyone talking for hours and people would not even notice I was standing there. It was exactly what I wanted to achieve but also perpetuated this feeling that I was invisible. I truly believed I wasn’t worthy of taking up space.

    Emotional eating was my refuge, my way of staying visible to one person in the world, myself. Being able to control food and my body was the one way I stayed present in this world.

    Our emotional eating often becomes our sanctuary. This can make it difficult to try and move away from. We know it is hurting us and we know that we are not coping but the alternative feels so scary. Why is this? Because the alternative is living our truth, showing up for ourselves and speaking up for ourselves in our lives. It doesn’t sound terrifying but have you tried it recently? Have you tried really speaking your mind? Have you tried uncovering your deepest darkest secrets to someone? Have you revealed to anyone how you feel so unlovable and so unworthy of friendship or community of any kind? Have you done this with someone who is trustworthy, loving and will listen?

    The only way to stop emotional eating is to accept the fact that we will need to make ourselves visible in this world. Stopping emotional eating means stopping hiding from the world. It means taking a step forward to becoming the person we want to be. The person we truly are…which, please note, is not a depressed, hopeless waste of space. I had this belief for an incredibly long time…that the real me was a waste of space. I couldn’t accept that I had a place here on earth my self-worth was so low. BUT I’m telling you right now this is NOT TRUE.

    I am so grateful everyday that I realised that I could only work on my self-worth and follow my dreams once I stopped using my controlling, obsession with food as a comfort blanket. A different life is possible for you once you step out from behind the shadow of your crazy relationship with food and stop being afraid of being seen.

    But I couldn’t have done it without support. If you know you need to make a change I might be the one to support you through this. I know exactly what you need and when you need it to transition on this journey. Get in touch through the comments below or email me sasha@sashafardell.com

    If you haven’t already check out my FREE Audio Masterclass on Emotional Eating – Why You Do It And How To Stop Today here

    Lots of love and bye for now xx

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  • Binge Eating, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Uncategorized

    First Guest Blog…Deep Dive into 5 Minutes of Delayed Bingeing by Ari Snaevarsson

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    Hi lovely readers,

    Today on the blog we have a special guest post from Ari who is a nutrition coach who works primarily with clients who suffer from disordered eating patterns. He also works as a dietetic technician at a residential eating disorder treatment center. He has also published a fantastic book 100 Days of Food Freedom: A Day-by-Day Journey to Self-Discover, Freedom from Dieting, and Recovery From Your Eating Disorder. You can check him and his book out here

    If you have any comments or questions let us know at the bottom and Ari and I will be happy to answer 🙂 Lots of love, please enjoy this special guest post from Ari.

    “Today I’d like to invite you into a much deeper look into what just 5 minutes of delayed binge-eating looks like. This is going to be an article unlike most others, and if you struggle at all with seemingly permanent binge-eating patterns, this could be what it takes to reorient your thought processes and get into a recovery-oriented mindset. But first, what are we talking about when we say “delayed bingeing”?


    When we “delay” a binge, we are literally giving the brain messages and
    feedback loops time to process, and we are bringing mindful awareness to these sensations as we let them unfold. This way, rather than jumping from one distraction to the next and simply hoping this binge does not overtake us, we are taking an actionable step towards postponing the behavior.
    This is vital for us to grasp. As I had to learn in my own recovery from Binge-Eating Disorder, the problem is not the bingeing. The problem is the mindlessness of the situation (and it’s worth noting the word “problem” in this sense carries no implications of moral wrongdoing, but rather just serves to identify where things go awry and problematic behaviors start popping up). The problem is that we allow these thought patterns and behavior chains to roll on without interruption, and when we do this, the natural endpoint is a binge session.


    So, we use delayed bingeing (whether it be executed in a formal treatment
    setting or on your own) to get in touch with the feelings present during an urge to binge. This allows us to regain control over our symptoms and ultimately reclaim Food Freedom.


    But what does delayed bingeing actually look like and, as an extension of that, how can you start employing it today? First and foremost, it’s important to mention that this is an exercise to undertake at your own risk. If you don’t believe this will be helpful for you, either due to immense fear of your inability to control the situation or else reason to believe this is targeting the wrong aspects of your recovery, please reach out and I’d be happy to help you process this.


    If this does strike you as a potentially important procedure, consider
    implementing it first on a weekly basis. You can scale it up from there, depending on its initial efficacy, but it’s important to start at a small and manageable level. After all, this should only be one small piece of a larger recovery plan.


    A deep look


    To begin, we’ll want to enter the area where bingeing would normally occur. For some, this is the kitchen, but for others, it could be a college dorm common room with a vending machine in it or maybe a convenience store. Granted, if it’s somewhere public and others could potentially spectate, that might not lend itself to the most mindful of exposures, but the priority is to emulate your typical binge environment. You need not necessarily get the food out just yet (the idea with delayed bingeing is to give yourself the option to binge or not binge, and getting the food ready presupposes that you will binge).

    Minute 1


    Start by focusing on the breath. Breathe in on a count of 4, hold for a count of 1, and then release on a count of 5. Do this until it becomes more automatically rhythmic.
    It can help to focus in on a certain anatomical area where the breath feels most apparent. This could be at the level of the stomach, chest, shoulder, or even the nostrils. Find somewhere where it feels apparent and can easily be cued into. When your thoughts start running away from you (i.e. you become distracted), don’t fret. Just bring yourself back to the breath and carry on from where you left off. Remember that any sort of mindfulness endeavor is as much about the returning to the breath as it is
    about the mindful awareness itself.


    Minute 2


    You can now move to thinking about the hunger or binge urges that are present. Notice the difference between these two. Notice whether any true hunger is even present at all.
    This is an important step, as the whole idea of this delayed binge is to consider its validity and which part of you is asking to engage in the behavior. Is it your stomach rumbling and asking for food? Or is it a series of inappropriately wired neural connections that have grown to believe rapidly consuming food is the most efficient way to numb and deal with overwhelming emotions? Often, it’s the latter.


    Minute 3


    By Minute 3, the goal is to start thinking about how harmless this is. You’ve now delayed the binge a full two minutes, and nothing bad is happening. You’re ostensibly not in physical pain (at least, not from this) and your mood and emotions are responding accordingly. This is an extremely important realization to cement: the idea that this comes in waves and you are safe to wait. The binge is not an inevitability.

    Importantly, this is not to invalidate the emotional turmoil you might be
    experiencing right now. I recall nights where the urge to binge was so strong that killing myself seemed a more appropriate response, so that I could finally escape the pain and fear associated with these urges. Sometimes the urges would feel like my soul was leaving my body, and I needed to binge. So, the idea here is not to discount what you’re feeling but rather to properly contextualize it. Understand that the urges might
    feel scary beyond belief, but they are not going to hurt you. You are safe right now.

    Minute 4


    Now shift to some loving kindness (metta) meditation. You are going to grant yourself love and radical self-compassion. As Dr. Kristin Neff teaches in Self-Compassion, there are three elements we want to focus on here: self-kindness, mindfulness, and common humanity. For self-kindness, use statements of compassion to emphasize self-care, such as “I’ve been doing an awesome job so far, and I’m staying super calm and in control.”

    For mindfulness, return to some deep breaths and use a statement or two of objective mindful awareness, such as “I’m feeling a little bit of impatience but also some pride” (of course, keep this true to what you’re actually feeling). And then, finally, for common humanity, we just want some statement that reminds you of the greater picture, like “Binge-eating is a neurological condition that affects millions. Others are going through
    this struggle too; I’m not alone.”


    Minute 5


    To finish the delayed bingeing, by Minute 5, we will implement the two-step process I refer to as “peaceful transitions” in 100 Days of Food Freedom. First, institute a state of “free mind” but letting your mind run rampant. For the next 20-30 seconds, your mind is free to be as “anti-meditation” as it wants, freely ruminating on thoughts, getting distracted without returning to the breath, etc. Then, return to the breath again and maintain a soft gaze (especially important if your eyes were closed prior to this), allowing yourself to peacefully transition back into normal life. This is also where you’ll decide whether to act on the urges or not.

    Remember that, if you do choose to act on them, there’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve now taken a full 5 minutes to consider where these urges are coming from and whether you truly want to eat or not. This is a significantly more informed decision now than it would have been 5 minutes ago.


    Conclusion


    The final decision, as this delayed bingeing protocol ends, is whether to eat. This is something you get to decide, which is the most important point of it all. Nobody gets to tell you when to eat or stop eating. The decision comes from within, and these 5 detailed minutes of mindfulness and self-evaluation serve to help you make a completely informed decision here. The final question to ask yourself before determining whether or not to grab for food now is: Am I hungry for this?

    Delayed bingeing allows for anyone struggling with binge-eating to reclaim some control, if only momentary, and realize the binge is not an inevitability. Binge-eating is often very different than “normal eating,” not only in the speed of consumption and lack of fullness cues, but also in the sense that it is primarily nudged on by psychological thought patterns that have led us astray. For example, maybe the thought is that “this current feeling is uncomfortable and the only way you can fix it is with your binge foods.”

    Rarely is the thought something as grounded in reality as “an ice cream would be nice right now.” As such, taking the time to become intimately connected to these thoughts and truly sift through them to discover their underlying motivations is more important than you might ever realize.

    Remember that this strategy can always be used when you need it, rendering it one of the most accessible therapeutic strategies in recovery. The binge is not an inevitability.

    Your life is your story. Make it amazing.”

    I hope you have enjoyed this guest post from Ari and found something useful in there for you. I personally have used this principle before bingeing many times in my recovery and it has helped me immensely.

    See you next time xx

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  • Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Recovery, Self Love

    30 – The good thing about emotional eating

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    Just a short note to wrap up Blogvember!

    A lot of the things we have covered over the course of the month have been around stopping emotional eating.

    While as a coach that is what I help women do, I also help clients to realise that emotional eating is actually not all bad.

    As soon as we become aware that we are eating for emotional reasons we have actually unlocked a doorway for learning how to better handle our emotions. From that place we become more conscious of the choices we are making and ultimately more in control of how we are choosing to look after ourselves. Therefore sometimes we might feel down or low and actually in that moment choosing to soothe ourselves with a cup of tea and biscuit might be exactly what is best for us.

    The point is that we want to be conscious of the choices we are making and how we choose to enjoy food and practice self-care.

    I hope you have found the blogs this month informative and helpful. They will continue on but a little less frequently 🙂

    Do remember if you ever feel like the struggle is too much just drop me an email or you can reach me on social media. I am always happy to hear from you.

    Lots of love xxx

     

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  • Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Recovery

    28 – The fear of the never-ending sugar binge

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    When chronic dieters first hear about the idea of food freedom, intuitive eating and allowing ourselves to eat ‘whatever we want’ we panic.

    We think that there is absolutely no way on earth this could ever turn out ok. We think that we will start eating and literally NEVER STOP. As though we will go into our local supermarket shovel the whole sweets and cake aisle into our trolley and then consume the whole lot without taking a breath. We believe that with no rules in place we will do that day after day for the rest of our lives.

    We believe food freedom means being on a never-ending junk food feeding fest.

    This is categorically not true.

    I can tell you now for 100% of people I have been in contact with where they have successfully shifted from dieting/bingeing/emotional eating to true intuitive eating this has not happened.

    Why is this? Because your body would hate it. And the key rule of intuitive eating is listen to your body.

    If you are TRULY eating intuitively your body will simply not allow you to fall down that trap. After a few more biscuits or extra slices of cake than normal you will start to feel sick, your stomach will be full and uncomfortable, you will feel tired and lethargic. These are all signs that you will listen to in your body as see them as the signals they are to stop eating. As an intuitive eater, that’s what you will do.

    Intuitive eating means saying to ourselves in those situations ‘oh maybe I’ve had too much chocolate tonight I feel a bit sick, never mind, I won’t eat anymore now and just pay attention to how I feel tomorrow’. Simple. No judgement, no wild emotional reaction. We just respond to the situation as it is.

    As we are able to stay more present with our bodies and feel how food is affecting us we will naturally make better choices. Those that feel good to our bodies and nourish us healthfully.

    Perhaps you are stuck in this trap right now and you are finding it hard to believe me. Its difficult to say “trust me, I have been there”…the number of times we read that, of how others have moved through the struggle we find ourselves stuck in. It can actually feel disheartening. Like there is something wrong with us that we haven’t figured it out yet. But there is no trick here. Listening to your body and learning to eat what your body wants and not from any other crazy rules you have made up is a practice. It is something we develop over time.

    Making the decision to start can sometimes be the hardest thing. But at least now you are safe in the knowledge that if you commit and follow through with intuitive eating you won’t end up in a never-ending food fest.

    If you are looking for someone to talk to about how you’re feeling around food just drop me an email and book in for a free clarity call where we can discuss where you are at now and some strategies to get you where you would like to be.

    Lots of love xxx

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  • Blogvember, Emotional Eating, Intuitive Eating, Recovery

    27 – Giving up emotional eating is not all or nothing – Backwards is always an option

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    Stepping on the path to stop emotional eating can feel like an absolutely ginormous leap into the unknown. A massive step filled with hesitancy and fear.

    To stop emotional eating means relinquishing the control we believe we have over ourselves, our bodies and our food. It means letting go of the reins we hold on to so tightly in order to get our lives and our bodies to look or feel a certain way.

    Emotional eating is eating in a way which has nothing to do with our physical hunger or physical needs. It is not all bad (!), neither is it all binge eating. The problem is that we so often eat unconsciously, in line with work schedules, kids schedules, the latest fad diet, that we have lost the ability to actually eat in alignment with our bodies and our natural physical needs. We’re dieting, bingeing, fasting, detoxing but without any real clue as to how this is affecting our bodies and what it is really doing to us or for us. We are so out of touch with our own physical needs that our eating patterns have become fabricated by the mind.

    When we eat in line with a certain strategy and forgo listening to our bodies we are giving all the control to our mind. This is when emotional eating happens. Instead of eating when we feel hungry and stopping when we feel full our minds give us other instructions, like ‘you must eat 1 banana for breakfast at 7am’. These instructions or rules are usually pretty random and are generated from years of conditioning by our parents, friends, diet books, celebrities…you get the idea. They are not normally based on our physical needs and wants. The problem with this type of eating with our minds rather than our bodies is that we create other rules with our minds that have nothing to do with using food for nourishment like ‘I eat ice-cream when I’m sad’.

    Because we already know food tastes good, our mind conjures up ways to use that to our advantage for hiding from emotions we don’t want to feel.

    So our mind is controlling when and how we eat and not our bodies, which is the thing that actually should be in control of how and what we eat.

    Stopping emotional eating means letting this go.

    It feels tough because we live in our minds for pretty much our whole lives.

    To let go of that control takes courage. It often feels like too big a leap for most people.

    But the amazing thing is you can actually try before you buy.

    You can try letting go of control slowly, maybe for a day or two. If it’s too much, if you can’t handle it, if a barrage of emotions fly at you and you simply can’t deal then you can let your mind get back in the driving seat. We always forget this when it comes to scary decisions. We think that it is all or nothing, or we convince ourselves that once you move forward you can never go back. But luckily life knows that is not a great plan for success. So often in life we take a step and then keep moving forward on a path that is not meant for us simply because we have this belief we can’t move backwards.

    Well guess what, you absolutely can. And when it comes to relinquishing control over our eating habits slowly but surely is the best way.

    The path to food freedom is rarely a straight line, you will find you go back on yourself, ‘slip-up’ or take a wrong-turn multiple times. The beautiful thing is you can start again at any time. This is your personal journey and it will be exactly what it is.

    If you find yourself failing more than you’re succeeding it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily doing anything wrong but it could mean you’d really benefit from a little nudge in the right direction. If you’ve tried on your own to break out of your emotional eating patterns and can’t quite seem to hack it please get in touch and let’s figure this out together, drop me an email here

    Lots of love xxx

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  • Binge Eating, Blogvember, Dieting, Emotional Eating, Recovery, Self Confidence, Self Love

    25 – How to feel what you feel when eating when you’re NOT eating

    • Comments Off on 25 – How to feel what you feel when eating when you’re NOT eating
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    I hope this title was cryptic enough…

    The reason so many of us turn to food is because it gives us pleasure, it gives us satisfaction, soothes us, comforts us or otherwise makes us feel a certain way. We use food to bring up a particular sensation. We want food to heal us, to take away our pain, to stop us feeling something or to get us to feel anything. We binge and we restrict all to change how we are feeling.

    Whatever method we choose what we are really searching for is that ‘ahhh’ moment when all of our worries and stresses slip away. When we feel that calm, peaceful wave move through our body. Where time seems to stop and we are not here any more. We are enveloped in that warm, comfortable place where nothing can touch us or hurt us. We feel safe, we feel supported. We feel secure and for that tiny fleeting moment we feel loved and accepted.

    This is the feeling we go searching for when we sit down to binge, or when we embark on a new punishingly restrictive diet. That feeling of undeniable acceptance. That moment where we are ok. We spend our days feeling like we are not good enough, not acceptable, too much of this or not enough of that. We crave some peace, so we go looking for it in food or in punishing ourselves through food.

    What if you could feel that peace, that safety, that security all the time? What if in every moment of every day, whatever you were doing, wherever you were going, you were able to feel secure, accepted, supported, comforted? What if you were able to have all that without manipulating your food or exercise? What if you were able to have all that while eating exactly what you wanted whenever you wanted?

    I’m here to tell you that you absolutely can.

    In fact the only thing that is stopping you from having that inner peace is the battle you are currently in with food and your body.

    The very thing that stops us from having peace is ourselves. We are the masters of torturing ourselves. We criticise, chastise and compare ourselves negatively to those around us, those online (more on how to stop that here). We are just straight unkind to ourselves. We starve ourselves or stuff ourselves to make us feel like somehow we fit into this imaginary box some ‘society’ out there has created.

    This does not need to be the case. The reality is there is no-one out there putting you in a box apart from you. Every single person is totally unique and different. There really is no ‘box’ that we need to get in. There simply can’t be because what the hell would that box look like?

    The only person you need to be like is yourself. And guess what, you already are that.

    We don’t need to ‘try’, we don’t need to force or battle or change to be more ourselves. We simply are. As soon as we realise that we instantly get that ‘ahh’ moment. Suddenly we relax when we realise that all we need to be and all we are is who we are right now. You do not need to change for anybody, for any rules, for any reason. Who you are deep inside is absolutely perfect.

    The hard part is getting to believe that though, right?…well here is the only tip you need.

    The only way to see that is for us to open ourselves to the possibility of not trying to be someone different.

    Stop searching for that ‘ahh’ moment in food or in punishment and instead let go and relax in the gloriousness that is you exactly as you are.

    If this speaks to you and you are right there with me that this is the answer and you just need a little help to get there then book in a completely free clarity session with me where we discuss where you’re at right now and give you a strategy to get to work on right away. Just drop me an email now – what are you waiting for?

    Lots of love xx

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