It’s not about the food. It’s not about knowing “what” you should do and “making” yourself do it. Freedom and a sustainable blissfully healthy lifestyle comes from identifying and healing emotional eating.
Does Julie’s emotional eating story speak to you?
“Julie” came to Blissfully Healthy for coaching because she felt frustrated and helpless. Even though she knew eating a lot of sugar and candy bars were not something that would bring her health and vitality, she had an insatiable craving every night to have one.
Every night Julie would get a hankering to get a candy bar on her way home from a long day at work. Every day the inner dialogue would be an inner battle. This is what it sounded like:
“Candy bars are bad. I want to lose weight. I shouldn’t eat candy bars. I shouldn’t eat candy bars. They are so bad for me. UGH! … But I WANT the candy bar. Screw it! I don’t care. I had a horrible day. Ok just this last time, then starting tomorrow I won’t have any candy bars every again.”
One candy bar would turn into two, and then into anything she wanted to eat for the rest of the night. A typical weight loss coach would talk about strategies and things to do to distract, and in some ways we do that here at Blissfully Healthy as well. But those strategies – no matter how good – aren’t likely to stick unless we get to the root of the problem.
In one of our private coaching sessions we used an emotional tool together and found her core attachment to food that was driving emotional eating. When she was 4 years old her mom and dad got divorced. She remembers feeling an immersible hole where once there was a connected, secure relationship with her Dad, now completely vanished. Suddenly and without warning he was out of her life, and remained so for over a decade. Julie’s Mom went into a deep depression and became emotionally and many times even physically unavailable to meet her basic needs as Julie’s mom struggled even just to get out of bed some days.
Julie remembers being so lonely, lost and hungry. One of these times she discovered a drawer in the kitchen full of candy cars and ate one. She remembers feeling an immediate comfort and joy from the sweetness, and her immense hunger subsided. The emotional pain she didn’t understand at 4 years of age melted away for a few minutes as she enjoyed that candy bar.
As time went on, whenever she felt alone in those early years she would go to that drawer and eat a candy bar. Ever since that day she has struggled with sugar, especially candy bars.
As we used the emotional tool together in her private coaching session, Julie noticed a profound inner shift. “I feel like a heavy weight I have been carrying around with me has just been lifted.”
Her body relaxed into the couch. She took a deep breath. She left that session no longer craving candy bars. The urge that she had been fighting for decades and trying to control with countless diets was just gone. It dissolved as we discovered the subconscious driving emotional need the emotional eating was trying to fulfill.
As we continued our work together in private and group coaching over the coming months, she remarked that she didn’t even want candy bars most days and when she did, she could eat a bite or two and stop without fighting herself. Now that we had dismantled the emotional attachment to food, she was easily able to make nutritional changes from a place of willingness – and it became a joyful thing to release weight! We spoke very recently; not only was she able release over 40 pounds, she has maintained her weight loss over the past 2 years!
Not everyone’s reason for emotional eating is this deep or extreme, but for some it is even deeper. Everyone is different.
Yes, nutrition matters. Moving your body matters. But the results will not stick unless the emotional work is done. This is the type of work most people simply cannot do alone. We need someone to walk along with us, guide us, create an emotionally safe space for us and empower us to release these attachments.
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We add-in emotional tools and dismantle attachments to food, so now food just becomes food. Food is fuel, not therapy! Private coaching is about releasing emotional eating coupled with nutritional guidance that naturally effects weight loss as a side effect of healing emotional eating.
Extra weight is a symptom of emotional eating. Emotional eating is a symptom of a need to self-soothe. So we discover what is causing that need in a safe place of private coaching or women’s only group coaching. Many times clients choose a combination of private and group coaching for the additional feeling of communal support and empathy it creates.
The Blissfully Healthy coaching program is about creating food freedom, not food restrictions! You can eat a potato chip and not want any more. Where you can have your previous binge foods in front of you and not even be tempted. Not that you can’t eat them, simply because you don’t want any – because you’re making loving choices for your body, instead.
Clients find they look forward to using the emotional tools because they provide immediate relief – and more effective relief. Stay with me here, I know what you’re thinking: “I can’t imagine anything providing an emotional escape better than food. No way!”
But I’m telling you that it’s true. When you change your mindset and adopt emotional tools, you no longer have a “food scarcity” mentality. There is no more forcing yourself, no mustering up the willpower or kicking yourself to do the healthy things. You no longer crave hours sitting on the couch in front of the TV or numbing out with a sugary treats. Instead you crave using your emotional tools. You look forward to moving your body. You want to cook and enjoy healthy food.
You enjoy eating delicious food without losing control because we’ve identified and healed the core issues around food and your body, so you can let go of the drive to use food. There is nothing left to control. This is why I always say, “It’s not about controlling emotional eating, it’s about releasing it.”
If you’re ready to take a step toward your own journey of healing and a blissfully healthy life, a free one-hour discovery session is my gift to you. Simply request a coaching session using the form on my contact page or use the button to schedule your session today.
