For many people, the natural life-affirming act of eating for nourishment has developed into something far more complex, and even fundamentally self-destructive.
Emotional eating is often linked with years of yo-yo dieting, bouts of bingeing, compulsive sugar cravings, endless over-thinking about food, zoned-out eating, and even secret purging.
It is not surprising that these habits can cause a schism in the heart and mind connection, as these practices are at odds with nature’s very desire for the whole person to achieve balance and to thrive.
Damaging habits around food can have an increasingly negative effect both physically and on mental wellbeing, contributing to increased levels of anxiety, lowering self-esteem, and even leading to depression.
Liz Hogon, my professional colleague and co-writer, and I have both worked for many years with clients to resolve their issues around emotional eating. The end goal is so that people who have struggled with disordered eating in their past can finally eat for nourishment and can feel comfortable around food.
In the self-help book, we co-wrote ‘7 Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating’ (Hammersmith Books, London), we explain why people who identify as emotional eaters feel differently about food and why diets don’t work for them.
Emotional eaters closely align their eating patterns and even food choices with their mood. For instance, a negative event or feeling low can trigger a sugar-laden bingeing session that inevitably leads to feelings of self-disgust and shame.
Emotional eaters frequently feel their eating is out of control, and this is sometimes, although not always, manifested in carrying excess weight.
They are often grazers of food too and snack at intervals throughout the day, so that they become confused about when they are really hungry or when they are sated and have had enough to eat.
Emotional eaters also often use food as a way of swallowing down their uncomfortable feelings or they turn to eating as a way to avoid dealing with the challenging issues in their life. In our book, we reveal why the latest diets will never work for emotional eaters.
Instead, in the book, we guide readers in how to successfully change their limiting beliefs about themselves, their body, and weight loss, and how to transform the self-sabotaging habits that have kept them stuck.
‘7 Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating’ book translates our unique therapy approach – honed over thousands of hours of working one-to-one with clients – into a structured self-help format combining powerful therapy tools and focused work-sheets that readers can use to explore and release their own patterns of emotional eating and lose weight successfully.
The therapy self-help tools in the book are the same ones we favour with our own clients to successfully release entrenched negative thinking and stop emotional eating.
The book has its own website, www.your7simpesteps.com, which provides access to audio downloads, easy-to-follow instructions, powerful hypnosis MP3s, and worksheets so that readers can get the greatest benefit from the book.
We understand that diets fail emotional eaters, and not that they fail diets; it isn’t just about what food they put in their mouths. It is really more about what is going on inside their mind, and this gentle process is designed to explore and release once and for all the emotional reasons that have been getting in the way of successful weight loss.
7 Simple Steps to Stop Emotional Eating is available from the Hammersmith Books website or Amazon.co.uk
Contact me if you recognise yourself as an emotional eater and are struggling to set yourself free from the tyranny of food. The contact button is at the bottom of the page for an obligation-free call.
I love yours and Liz’s book. I think yours is the only one that doesn’t patronise the reader and tell them to eat less, and move more.
Sally great post you gentle guide is into the deeper aspects of emotional eating just as I imagine you would with your clients.