I thought I was an emotional eater. Turns out, I wasn't.
“I still don’t know if The F*ck It Diet will work for me, because I am an emotional eater. I eat and eat to try and erase the cares of the world.”
I hear you. Emotional eating is a real thing. But! Dieting is making that worse.
Hear me out…
Bingeing in response to restriction (and mental restriction), is different from emotional eating. They are two separate things. If you are experiencing both, you have to address both. And you have to address both separately.
And dieting is not the answer for either.
I used to think I was an emotional eating. I assumed that was why I was bingeing. My bingeing was actually a response to years of dieting (physical restriction) and guilt around food (mental restriction).
The problem with dieting to try to heal emotional eating is two fold. One, it’s not actually addressing the emotions that are causing you to numb out with food, which can easily switch over to another coping mechanism. Two, the reactive eating that restriction causes will make it very hard to tell whether you are actually emotionally eating, or if you are just reactively eating in response to the restriction.
Dieting causes reactive eating and deep feelings of denial that are biological, as well as emotional. It snowballs, and all of a sudden you assume you are a monster emotional eater, bingeing and completely out of control, but what you are really doing is responding to both physical and mental restriction.
I have found that healing your relationship with food by stopping dieting, is your bset bet to stop reactive eating. And, finding healthy ways to soothe and regulate yourself will naturally make emotional eating fall away.
Healing your relationship with food, by stopping dieting and learning to eating intuitively is your best bet to healthfully, easily, and sanely becoming aware of any “emotional eating”.
I healed my relationship with food, and realized… oh I guess it wasn’t emotional eating after all.
For a way more in depth guide to healing your relationship with food, read The F*ck It Diet book.
