How to overcome emotional eating
BULA Fiji! Thank you for taking time out to read Bula Vakasaama, a column dedicated to enlightening readers about practical strategies for optimal mental health and mind wellness.
Today’s topic is about understanding the important connection between your thoughts and your body’s weight and health. In dietetic medicine, we call it the gut-brain axis.
Simply put, it means what you feed your mind determines what you will feed your body and in turn, whatever it is that you feed your body will then affect the quality of your thoughts.
My personal struggle with food
For years I used food for comfort. Any emotional occurrence such as happiness, sadness, anger, guilt, frustration, and more would be my cue to hit the pantry and finish a whole packet of chips or an entire familysize chocolate bar (the giant Toblerone from Airport Duty-Free … Oh boy… don’t even get me started on that story!).
Every Monday morning I would decide to eat healthily and every Monday lunchtime I would decide to postpone the healthy-eating commitment to next Monday. That was my pattern.
Apart from the weight gain, I was also feeling lousy about my sugar addiction.
Yes, processed sugar is poison and yes, sugar addiction is very real and detrimental to mental and physical wellness.
I was tired of feeling lousy about myself, my weight, my lack of energy and my irritability. This had to stop.
I was aware of my pattern. As Oprah says, when you know better, you do better. I had to find out why I had this pattern and address the elephant that incessantly roamed the jungle of my mind.
I sat myself down with my journal and fiercely wrote down my ‘food-related’ memories on a timeline, gently tracing them back to that one single crucial memory of the incident that was responsible for creating my emotional eating paradigm.
It took three hours for me to trace my pattern back to that first incident that happened when I was around five years old.
That was the incident where I was shamed for not finishing the food on my plate because all the other cousins had finished their food and were allowed to go outside and play.
I was a skinny little five-year-old who was punished for not being able to finish my food.
I couldn’t join my cousins outside and had to watch them all have fun while I struggled to eat. I remember the food getting stuck in my throat because the lump of tears was already blocking the passage because all I wanted to do in that moment was cry loudly.
But there was the threat of being punished further if I cried.
That particular incident resulted in my first negative perception of food. I started to view food as an obstacle to my playtime’which was my joy-time.
Since that incident, the only way I coped those moments of intense pressure was to gobble down my food as quickly as possible and run outside to play. I never spent time to chew my food and appreciate the taste.
During my food-journaling, it took me another few hours to link my adult life’s eating pattern with my teenage life’s major incidents where I had to make choices that affected my wellbeing.
Most of those choices were harmful to my wellbeing and when I connected the dots between my dietary pattern and those lifestyle choices and how my mental state was back then, everything became crystal clear. All my life up until that point, I was running away from feeling the emotions of disrespect.
My child self was disrespected and shamed about food. Later in the teen years, incidents of disrespect triggered more of emotional eating, instead of emotion-processing and healing.
Diets were not the answer. Processing my emotions and finding ways to heal and recover were the real answers to my terrible eating habits.
My constant thought patterns were that of condoning disrespect and shame for myself, hence I resorted to unhealthy food and beverages to feel good about myself.
A paradigm shift, which I now call my gut-shift, revealed to me that for me to make better choices in life, and nourish my soul with love, light, peace, and joy, I must first and foremost, nourish my mind with the right mental foods so that I could then choose better foods and beverages to nourish my physical self.
If my essential self - my soul, and my mind - was starving, how was I ever going to choose the right foods for my body?
How to feed your mind and body Good thoughts, good words, good deeds. I had to heal from my emotional eating pattern one thought at a time.
It is always a good idea to speak to a professional counsellor who can help you with processing your emotions which you may have blocked since childhood.
Addiction to unhealthy foods and beverages is a symptom of unprocessed emotions resulting from hurt and trauma.
The following are daily affirmations to feed your mind with positive thoughts by erasing negative ones. It’s not always what you eat that determines your body’s health, it’s also what’s eating you.
Junk thought versus healthy thought
❍ I hate myself — I am a beautiful creation of God;
❍ I’m a failure — I have survived through my tests and learnt my lessons;
❍ I need food to feel better — God is my comforter. Only God can make me feel better. I submit to God.
❍ I’m stuck — My life is unfolding according to God’s plans for me;
❍ I hate feeling like I’m always struggling — I am grateful for everything I’m learning through this experience. God has put me to it, and ‘HE’ will see me through it. I am wiser and stronger now that I am going through this experience;
❍ No one loves me, I will end up alone — I am a beautiful creation of God. I deserve love, light, peace, and joy. I am love, I radiate love.
■ PRINCESS R LAKSHMAN is a counsellor, clinical nutritionist, writer, narrative therapist, and certified life-coach. She is passionate about mind wellness and an advocate for kindness and self-care. The views expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper. She can be reached at info@ princesslakshman.com