Category Archives: emotional eating

Emotional Eating Awareness Stressors

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Sometimes I am too nosy for my own good. Meaning, I have a curiosity that needs to be satisfied and many times the outcome is detrimental to my own peace of mind.

I’ve been doing my “noting technique” and self check-ins, giving a name to my physical and emotional feelings and then letting them go, not ruminating on them. I am dabbling in “radical acceptance” by not attributing a good or bad to my feelings, just accepting them as they are and that it’s ok. I am a work in progress. Things were going well and I’ve been noticing a difference in how I feel physically when I choose to eat, and what I choose to eat.

I decided to participate in a 4-week wellness challenge and my goal is to learn about my emotional eating and start learning techniques to manage it. I mentioned in my blog yesterday that I am foregoing keto in order to devote my focus to getting my learn on. So my goals with this challenge are not weight loss focused. I’ve adjusted my goals for where I am right now and what I want to learn. One of my goals is to adjust my thinking regarding physical activity. View activity as being gentle and restorative rather than strenuous for calorie burn. I did MocassinFlow yoga with my friend Lisa Hill for the first time last night (she has weekly classes via Zoom out of Ontario, CAN). I want to be gentle and supportive with my physical and mental health. And because my injured ankle still gets sore with extended walking, and it’s freaking cold outside, AND because my new left hip is still healing but has good range of motion again, I am giving yoga another look. I am in it for the restorative benefits because that is in line with how I am trying to restore a healthy relationship with food.

Anyway…..my curiosity, my nosiness, got the better of me on Monday. I had the “great idea” to track my food in MyFitnessPal. Why you ask? I wanted to see if utilizing my noting technique and taking that pause before eating had any effect on my calorie intake for the day. WHYYYYYYY?????? Why would I think that was a good idea????? Guess what happened? I got stressed out when I saw how many calories I was eating. And then guess what happened?? I ended up eating Tostitos Scoops right out of the bag before I was able to pause myself, admit how stressed out I made myself with my curiosity, and then walk away from the bag of chips.

And that is the perfect example of how dysfunctional my relationship with food has become. It is a struggle to just take note of this and not sit here and wonder, “What the hell is wrong with me.” Part of this, I realize, is my public health training and experience. When I was in charge of the Diabetes Prevention Program at our local IHS service unit, and the NAWLM Weight Loss program at KUMC, tracking food was the biggest tool we utilized in losing weight. My job was to promote and be encouraging about tracking food. The National Weight Control Registry also found that tracking food was one of the most significant factors in successful weight loss and maintaining weight loss for at least one year. One of the weight loss challenges organized by a colleague uses a point system where tracking food earns points. Weight Watchers, where I had much personal success in 2001-2002 in losing 35 pounds and keeping it off until I had my first child in 2004, used a point system where food tracking was the foundation. Somewhere along my journey, this research-supported tool, became a source of stress in my relationship to food.

Chalk it up to another thing learned about Shelley. I am happy to report that although I experienced some frustration with myself, these are exactly the things I want to learn about me. So rather than beat myself up, I was able reframe my experience and then celebrate the new discovery. And I made the decision to not track my food while I am learning about my style of emotional eating. I am going to allow myself to focus on the NSV – the Non-Scale Victories and celebrate those while I heal.

Checking-In With Myself

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I made the executive decision to forego doing keto while I am figuring out my emotional eating. I will eat the keto meals that are nutritious and that I enjoy, such as my egg and veggie brunches, and I will continue to make food choices that benefit my health, but I feel it’s more important to not put restrictions on my self-learning. Restrictions induce stress when it comes to food for me, so let’s get that barrier out of the way while I get my learn on.

I am starting with taking note of how I am feeling throughout the day. I am putting a name to my feelings and differentiating between a physical sensation and an emotion. I’m not labeling anything as good or bad, each thought or emotion is simply something that’s going on in my body or in my head. It is what it is, yo. It is me and I am ok. I take a few moments to do a check-in with myself, and I am being deliberate about doing this frequently. I share these things throughout the day with my husband as well. That serves two purposes: 1) it helps me practice my marital communication skills, sharing with my companion because he is not a mind reader, 2) I remember when I first started on my anti-depressant and my provider suggested that my husband be my “barometer”. I can enlist his observation and intuitive skills to help show me the progress I am making or to bring something to my attention that I may not be seeing.

I have to slow down a little bit to take this mental “pause”. I am so used to being busy all the time that I always felt like this would be more hindrance than helpful. Like, “I got no time to be introspective!!!” But feeling compelled to be busy all the time is also stressful. Aaaahhhhhh, see what I just learned about myself there??? I’ve found that taking that pause takes less than a minute. And the more deliberate I am about practicing this, the better I will get at it and more comfortable I will feel with it.

When I was cooking dinner last night (my mom’s chili recipe), Joe B asked me if I was learning if I had any trigger foods (foods that set off a binge once I start in), or if I had identified the foods I most frequently crave when I’m stressed. I promptly responded “Popcorn, chips, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and butter pecan ice cream.” They are salty, crunchy, and in the case of cookies and ice cream, they have a salty-sweet combo, where if they are available and once I start in, then that’s all I want to eat. Now that I think about it and reflect back on yesterday, I also discovered that I have the same response to my homemade kale chips. They are salty, crunchy, and once I start in I will knock out a whole plate. But I’m not going to put the stamp of approval on this choice because it’s simply swapping one trigger food for a nutritionally-dense trigger food. That’s still emotional eating. Another “Ah-ha” moment for me there.

This path I’m on is already very interesting. I have to remind myself frequently that this is a J.O.U.R.N.E.Y. And I can take my time to take note of and enjoy all the new discoveries.