Latest / RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way / Ep. 31 – Emotional Eating

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Ep. 31 – Emotional Eating · RiseUp - Live Joy Your Way

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today's episode is produced by my friends at Walk West.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you're looking to grow your brand and generate leads through podcast or video production, head over to walkwest.com.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, let's start the show.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Rise Up.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Live Joy Your Way with Comedy Wood.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's time to step into your power.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Rise Up, Live Joy Your Way.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: I am Comedy Wood, and I'm so excited to have you tune in for today's episode.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: For those of you who are unfamiliar with who I am and what I do at home, I am a mom of five, but at work, I am a certified life coach that works with individuals on healing that relationship with oneself and ending the outsourcing of their self-worth so that they can go on to have healthier relationships with others, have success in business in their career, and ultimately just truthfully live at happiness as they define it for themselves.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Really be engaged in their life, move away from that box checking into pure engagement and living life.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Today I wanted to talk about a topic that seems to be coming up uh kind of routinely right now, just based on the uncertainty of the world and the pandemic that we're dealing with and just the stressors I think that many of us are feeling.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a topic of emotional eating.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I will I will be as transparent as possible and say that my go-to food is actually Reese's Pieces, um, peanut butter cups.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: But for some of us, sometimes we do turn to food for comfort when we feel stressed and overwhelmed.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And many times if we would stop and think about it, there are times when we when we reach for those quote unquote bad foods or just eating too much in general.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: If we were to slow down and think through it and ask ourselves, what am I feeling right now?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: We might realize that we're not actually eating because we're hungry, but we're actually eating because there might be some emotion or a fear or some thought that we don't want to actually face or that we're trying to numb ourselves away from.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Emotional eating like doesn't involve necessarily physical hunger at all.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's really that reaching for food in response to some negative emotion that's popping up.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: And when something upsetting is happening, we do try to turn to other ways of um covering it up or or just um avoiding dealing with it.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so oftentimes, and I've heard so many people talk about the COVID-19, um, but even you know, people have long talked about the freshman 15, which is you know the 15 pounds that many freshmen put on in their first year of college.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And when when you unpack that, a lot of that is related to there's a lot of emotions that we're dealing with, with change and with uncertainty and with our routines being sh shaken up, and we turn, we turn to food.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: So the the thing that we have to recognize though is that this out of control eating doesn't necessarily it doesn't solve our emotional problems because even after we've consumed all the food, the issue that we've suppressed, that emotion that we've suppressed and put in a box, it's still there, and it's going to recycle and come back.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because the truth of the matter is emotions are um they are meant to be in, they are energy in motion, right?
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: They are meant to be felt, they're meant to rise and crust, we're meant to move through them.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're not meant to identify with them, but we are meant to actually feel them because our those emotions are telling us about an unmet need.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so this out-of-control eating and this suppression that we do, truthfully, in essence, makes it worse because now not only do we have the first emotion that we were that we were afraid to face, there's also this added-on feeling of guilt and shame that the excessive eating sometimes leads us to.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about the causes of emotional eating.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: While occasionally using comfort food is not necessarily harmful, which I mean, like I mentioned at the beginning, I do eat a few Reese's peanut butter cups every now and again as my go-to comfort food, but I've become much more conscientious about when I reach for those Reese's Pisces cups, I ask myself, you know, what's my motivation here?
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: So when you use food as a coping strategy, you really do sometimes make it worse for yourself because you're trapping yourself in that unhealthy coping strategy without actually acknowledging the emotions that are disturbing you or that are causing you those anxious thoughts or that overwhelm.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And stress is one of the most common causes of emotional eating.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: Many people experience hunger when they're feeling stressed, and this is because the stress causes our bodies to produce cortisol, which is the stress hormone.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Cortisol then makes you crave foods that upsurge energy, such as sweet foods, so sugary foods, fried foods, and salty foods.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when you experience ongoing stress, you're more likely to turn to food for emotional comfort.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Again, this is an example of why it's so important to actually deal with the stressors that we're having in life and prolonged period of stress, prolonged period of that place of overwhelm ends up being unhealthy for us on a physical and an emotional level.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when we another way that we reach out and we do and we have emotional eating is when we don't know how to handle or express these intense emotions that we're feeling.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: So those intense emotions might be anger, sadness, loneliness, possibly fear.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so again, in an effort to suppress those, because we don't know how to actually express them in a in a meaningful way, because we see them as these negative things, um, we actually end up just trying to cover it up by reaching for food and and overeating.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: We may also engage in emotional eating when we feel nervous, bored, hopeless, or unhappy.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, again, with COVID and the pandemic, not only is there the stressors that are happening, but some of us are just we're bored.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: We have nothing else to do.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Some of us are really feeling nervous about well, how is this all gonna pan out?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: How when how is school gonna look for our kids?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: How is work gonna unfold?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Those of us who have lost jobs, we might be really not just stressed, but just also nervous.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: So but unfortunately, overeating doesn't actually make those negative emotions go away either.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Emotional eating actually just escalates the problem because if you're already feeling sad and then you are overeating, now you might feel as though you are overweight, and now of course you feel powerlessness over the fact that you don't even know how to control your weight.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: So learning coping strategies and ways to deal with our emotions and stop the habit of emotional eating can help obviously slow down this um reaching for food in order to deal with or cover up, not deal with, but cover up those emotions that we're trying to avoid.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: The first step in possibly overcoming emotional eating is to recognize the triggers.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, recognize those triggers that make you feel bad.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, for instance, if there are places, people, situations, emotions or thoughts that we routinely are finding disturbing and are routinely causing us to reach for that extra food or the unhealthy foods, we need to address that.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Especially when it comes to people.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: I have had so many clients talk about their weight issues, and when we when we unpack it, oftentimes they are involved in a toxic dynamic.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the overeating is the way that they cope with the toxicity that they are living with on a daily.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really it's really unpacking that and understanding what those triggers are and addressing the triggers rather than only saying, I've got to go on a diet.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Journaling can be a great strategy to help identify these triggers.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you can keep track of the patterns behind when you have emotionally eaten, and you're able to identify possibly the emotional triggers that cause the out-of control eating, or again, the environmental triggers that might cause it, or places that you go that might cause it, it by journaling we're able to see the pattern, and then we can feel more empowered to come up with those strategies that we want to put in place to start managing those in order to curtail the emotional eating.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Another strategy is to write down your thoughts and emotions without censoring them.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: What happens is when we when we try to write them down and we start to censor them, we're already getting into judgment mode.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're still not allowing them to actually uh be processed.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really important to go ahead and write down those thoughts or those emotions and just just let them let it be free-flowing so that they can actually not only be processed, but then you can also start making that connection of the thoughts, feelings, and then the behavior that leads to the emotional eating.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: So again, this is another aspect of journaling, but it's it's such a it's such a great strategy when you're trying to uncover why the pattern of emotional eating.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: It allows you to really get in touch with the the subconscious, the subconscious uh thoughts that are flowing around in our mind, and it brings it to the forefront.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: It brings these patterns into your awareness so that you can start becoming aware of either the the negative self-talk that's happening, the triggered emotions that bring it up, the triggered people, the triggered places.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It once we're able to bring it into our awareness, we're at we are in a place of um we're no longer powerless.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're in a place where we're now able to make a choice.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: We allow ourselves to actually get to a choice point where we can make that choice of how do we want to handle these triggers that are causing the emotional eating, rather than simply mindlessly just reaching for food to try to numb whatever we're trying to avoid.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so journaling really does help recognize the critical self-thoughts and allows space for us to start letting go of the self-judgment.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Many, many, many times.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: The if we really unpack it and we we we go through not only just the patterns that are happening, but we also start recognizing how we're talking to ourselves and the negative way that we talk to ourselves, that is when we can recognize the pattern of how we try to just cover that up with overeating or emotional eating, I should say.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Emotional eating, it the thing that we have to really understand is it doesn't solve those personal issues.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a mechanism, it's just as if um somebody tries to uh deal with their emotions or deal with the triggers in their life with alcohol or with drugs.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's just another way that we're numbing and we're trying to suppress.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: And as I've talked about several times before on different episodes, that emotional suppression and putting it, putting those emotions or what we don't want to face into a box, it doesn't go away.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And instead it just sits there and festers and eventually it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really important to to work through and learn how acceptance of what's happening in our here and now is um our a way to allow ourselves to get to that point where then we can ask ourselves, what is my next best step forward?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm feeling this way.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: I need this to help me feel better.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, what is my next step to move forward?
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, mindfulness, practicing mindfulness, getting in the present moment.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times with that emotional eating, it's because our monkey mind wants to either jump back to the past because we're judging something that has happened in the past, or our monkey mind is future tripping and getting going into the present and trying to solve problems that don't exist, and we start causing ourselves overwhelming anxiety, which anxiety is truly just fears, and we don't want to deal with them.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what ends up happening is the way that we deal with them is to pretend that they don't exist or to at least cover them up and just simply grab food and just emotionally eat.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's really important to find ways that we can bring ourselves into the present and allow ourselves to really honor and accept where we're at right now, and then figure out what support system do we need before reaching for those unhealthy foods.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you are ever at a point where you would like to talk about what's coming up for you, I always welcome people to book a call with me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: All you have to do is head over to chatwithcomony.com.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk through what's happening for you, or if you'd like to read more information, more blogs on topics like this, feel free to hop on over to my website at comedywood.com.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And until next time, I'm Comedy Wood.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening to Rise Up.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Always remember your uniqueness and the gift that you bring to this world.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Life happens for you, not to you, I don't know.