Comfort Eating

Sometimes we try to stop comfort eating at the surface. We know what we are doing is not benefiting our bodies or the situation we are in but for some reason we keep coming back to food to take it all away.

For a brief moment, anyways.

It continues to amaze me that there are no two comfort eaters that are the same. We all reach for different foods, at different times, for different reasons. However we have managed to sum it all up in two words "Comfort Eating" or "Emotional Eating" or "Stress Eating".

The problem is that if we don't open those terms up a little more, it can be really hard to stop the somewhat destructive process. We often stay on the surface, see our patterns and think: "Ok, this is seriously the last time I'll eat a full bar of chocolate (or insert your go-to food and amount)" but the next day you find yourself doing and saying the same thing.

Enough. Lets look a little deeper. Its like pruning a tree regularly and thinking 'this time I know it will stop growing'. The tree keeps growing because it does. Our emotions are there because they are there.

There is so much to dig through underneath those terms - comfort, emotional and stress. Asking questions like what is it that I am comforting? What specifically is the emotion I am soothing? What exactly is the source of my stress? You may still eat, but at least you may find a little more clarity.

The reward? You begin to really see the source of your discomfort. You realize that it will never be soothed with food. The source may actually be asking for love, intimacy, adventure, nature, family. None of which will ever be satiated by food.

What this requires is a sincere desire to really move away from these eating patterns, a little bit of patience (or even better, awareness) and a lot of breathing.

I promise there is nothing to lose and about a million things to gain.

If you want to learn more, I'm running a Comfort Eating Workshop on June 11 - details here.

xoSusanne