As I said above, many things contribute to Emotional Eating.  But one thing I have come to understand from my own journey and from working with clients is that it isn't really about the food.  As I said above; It's mostly about what we made the food mean. 

For instance. 

If you grew up in a house that was busy or undemonstrative with regard to love, yet mealtimes were about sitting together as a family, sharing your days and maybe your mum put dinner on the table saying "I made your favourite". And so you begin to link love and food from a very early age. You may also equate food to connection, a sense of belonging and feeling special.

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Or, when you were very small and full of life and loved to chatter away and you were told to be quiet alot, then to keep you quiet, you were given a biscuit or chocolate, you will begin to learn to soothe unmet needs (attention, love, play) with the food.  Over time you would begin to notice those feelings of lack (of attention, of connection) almost as soon as they come up and go straight for the food instead, this then becomes a habit where you wouldn't even necessarily notice what was happening, but instead find yourself in front of the fridge/ cupboard, reaching for food and eating it, most likely, mindlessly. 

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Or, another common issue is plate clearing.  As you were growing up, how often did you hear that you can't have dessert until you'd finished all of your dinner? Or that there were starving children in Africa? What happens here is that you have learned to over-ride your natural feelings of fullness and satiation in order to get to the food you enjoyed or do as you're told and avoid the nagging voice. Learning to notice these feelings of satiation is a process of learning to trust yourself again. 

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Or, perhaps when you were born or a baby/very young child, you were 'sent' away from your mother to be looked after elsewhere. This can set up a sense of abandonment and a deep sense of 'being wrong', which no amount of food will soothe, but because the food you had with mum would have been an avenue to closeness, cuddles and love, relaxation and ease, connection and being seen, that's what not having it came to mean.  Your body holds the memory of having it and also the memory of not having it.  And it's a deep need that will be pursued. 

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As you can see, just from the few examples above, food can become a means to soothe complex needs. And many of them. 

This is why we can find it so very hard to deal with on our own. It takes alot of care, compassion and a felt sense of safety to start to pick apart all that contributes to our own emotional eating story.  

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My Story

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Since my late teens I had used food to soothe, to treat and to bring connection into my life.

A crunch point came for me about 9 years ago.

I was overweight, felt lost and was desperate to find a new way to be. 

I'd been on many diets, lost the weight and put it back on again. 

My head was full of judgements about my lack of control, about my food choices (on bad days), my weight, my shape.  I never came up to scratch unless I'd been 'good' all day and felt slim etc etc. 

My self worth was through the floor.  I looked outside of myself to know if I was worthy. 

It was a mostly secret, silent and painful battle.

I didn't trust myself to know what was right for me anymore. I often felt an overwhelming panicky misery.

I felt powerless to change anything.

"What's wrong with me?" trampled its way through my brain on a too-regular basis.

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Despite all of this, I just could not face another diet.  

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Inside I KNEW there had to be another way, a healthy way, a way that felt natural and easier, that was NOT another diet, more restriction, more will power that I didn't seem to have.

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I had a deep sense that I needed to begin to move towards myself again; by that I mean, put faith in myself to know what's right for me, and to not be swayed by another diet, another person's view of what I needed.  I KNEW the answers were inside of me. 

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Today, I am so very thankful for that deep pull to look in another direction. 

 

It led me to care for, and make peace with, my old emotional pain, change my relationship with myself and with food and then to help other women do the same. 

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Along the way I trained in many healing modalities that connect the psychology and the energy. I learned to notice my feelings and to be aware of what was being triggered and then to care for it.  I got back in touch with my body's signals and learned to love, accept and respect my body.  I regularly move my body in a way that supports it and not just because it'll burn calories!

I learned how to take care of me in a way that supports the person that I want to be, have compassion for myself and to value who I am.  

And when I recognise that I am finding things a bit tougher, I seek support and work through what is coming up for me.

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Along the way, I recognised that a new way of looking at food issues was needed by many.   That diets aren't the real fix; that remains an internal journey, where we come home to ourselves.