Ep 45 - The #1 Skill You Need to Stop Emotional Eating
December 19,2024
In order to stop emotional eating, you need to understand the concept of contrast in life.
We can never be 100% happy and if you try, you will be left disappointed and going to food to escape the sadness.
In this episode, we’ll explore how contrast—the highs and lows, the positive and negative—plays a vital role in our emotional and eating experiences.
You’ll learn:
Why contrast is key to appreciating both life and food
How accepting negative emotions can help you stop emotional eating
The common mistake of trying to “fix” sadness instead of learning to feel it
Why emotional eating often takes the place of other habits like drinking or smoking
TRANSCRIPT:
Hello confident eaters. I am back home in Denver, Colorado after spending the last month or so in Mexico, I was staying in Porto Escondido. It was amazing. Super hot though. And so I am actually excited to be back in the cold. And the first thing I did when I got back from the airport the other day was go for a long walk outside.
And I was filled with so much gratitude on this walk, like overfilling with how much joy I had about being back home and it was weird because normally we're not really excited about the cold weather. Everyone wants to go somewhere warm in the winter, but I was actually so grateful for it and looking at the view of the Rocky mountains, getting able to go on the walking trails that are by my house. Being in my own kitchen again and because I had a shared kitchen where I was staying in Mexico, but I did not have all of my favorite ingredients in it. And all of my vegan vegetarian foods that I have at home, I felt really grateful for my pets, my animals, my dog, and my two cats. Really just all of it. And the reason I felt this gratitude is because of the contrast, because I was just around Palm trees and the hot weather being in the shared living space, being at home as a contrast to that experience. And that's what I want to talk about today. Is the contrast of life and how this concept can help you stop emotional eating.
Most of us want to be happy all the time. That is what we are chasing. Eternal happiness. This place of there wherever there is, whether that's five pounds, less, 10 pounds less, this magical land where everything gets better when we lose weight or this magical land. When we get that new job, we get married.
We go on that vacation, whatever it is, where there is always better than here. But when we can learn to appreciate and love this contrast, that's when everything becomes so much easier and this will directly translate into your relationship with food and how you eat.
So talking about this concept of contrast a little more right now, it is the holidays and this is why the holidays are so fun.
We don't normally have Christmas trees up and listening to the holiday music and having the lights and the house decorated. The reason it's fun is because it's not like that in July. It's different in July. And so when we have it up, it becomes more fun. If Christmas lights were up year round, it wouldn't become so special anymore.
So let's think about how this applies to emotions specifically. Most people who are emotional eating, just because they are trying to escape these negative emotions. I always put quotation marks around negative because negative emotions, you know, feeling sad, frustrated, angry, overwhelmed. All of these emotions aren't necessarily bad, but we sometimes describe the experience of having them as negative. And when we have this experience, if you don't love these emotions, if you don't want to be feeling them, that's when we go to try to escape with food.
So you have a long day at work. You're feeling so overwhelmed, so stressed out by life, and you just want to escape it. You just want to zone out and eat the food. You have a big conflict with your husband and you just don't even want to address it. You don't want to feel the emotions of anger and shame and whatever's coming up. So you want to go to food to escape it. Now I was recently coaching a client inside my confident eater program, and she was describing an emotion she felt the stress as like a storm. Like it felt like a storm inside her body. And I asked her, well, what do you love about storms? What can be fun about storms? And she said, well, you know, I do love cozying up with a book and a hot tea on the couch and just watching the rain pour down.
And then she goes which I thought was so much fun. She goes, you know, what else I love is I love boating and sailing. And whenever we're out on a boat during a storm, we found it so much fun. Me and my husband, we go out there and I of course in the back of my mind, I was like, oh, that might be a little dangerous.
But she was like, no, it's like so much fun to be out there and see the storm coming in. And I showed her that the recent she loves these things. Is because it's not always stormy. She likes the storminess because it creates a fun environment to be able to read it because it creates some interest to the normally sunny days when she's on her boat, it makes life more fun to have the study days and the stormy days.
And I asked her, how might this apply to how you're feeling the storm inside you, that you feel about the situation at work? What could be fun about that? What could actually be enjoyable about that?
And she started to realize, oh, you know, the reason I'm having these uncomfortable emotions at work is because something is going against my values.
This is trying to tell me something, this emotion is being a communicator for me, and I'm so grateful to have it. And so now, instead of going into her car, snacking on the nuts, trying to just zone out from her Workday, she's able to truly sit with that emotion and say, you know what? This isn't so bad.
It's giving me information. It's giving me contrast. The storm can be fun to actually write into, because I know it's not going to last forever. It's temporary.
Another time that this concept of contrast can come up around food is with hunger and fullness. So when you eat something, when you're not that hungry and you're just kind of in the middle and not hungry or full, it doesn't actually taste that good. Or if you're coming to the end of a binge and you just want to keep eating, like I know I would get to the end of the bench and I would have this thought of, well, I need protein now because I didn't have any protein. There's been general carbs. So I would binge on a protein bar then. And it was the worst tasting protein bars ever. Even if I actually liked these protein bars, they were so gross because I was so full already. There was no contrast to my fullness. It was already full.
So how you can use this idea is I genuinely want to be hungry for my meals. I welcome hunger freely. I love saying no to snacks in the middle of the day, because I want to be hungry for my dinner since I know my dinner is going to taste best if I have that hunger for it. It's the contrast of, because I'm hungry, the fullness feels good. Because I am full eating food doesn't feel good. There's no contrast in my body. You know, hunger is this sensation of like this emptiness, this tightness in the stomach.
Now fullness, we don't want to have a necessarily super stretched stomach, but when we get rid of that hunger and we're not feeling that emptiness anymore, we're starting to feel some food in our body or stomach is starting to stretch a little. The reason that is enjoyable is because we had that hunger there to start. So you want to be hungry. So that way you can feel that sensation of fullness. Fullness doesn't really feel good when you're already full and you keep eating.
Now think about going out to eat as a contrast. If you are eating out for every meal, it's not as fun anymore. The reason going out to eat can be exciting and enjoyable is because it is more of a special occasion. And take it from me while I was visiting and living in Mexico. I out for almost every meal that month probably ate breakfast for most of my meals at home.
And then probably 80% of my other meals. I ate out at a restaurant. Simply because the food there was so cheap, it was so easy and convenient to go out to eat. So I just went out to eat most of the time. And as I've come home, I can tell you, I have never been so grateful for my kitchen in full pantries and grocery stores and the ability to cook on my own without a whole bunch of other people in the kitchen.
This gratitude that I have now is so fun. I didn't have that before. The grocery stores where I was in Porto Escondido. We're more like little fruit stands you'd have like your fruit and vegetable stand and then you'd have your bakery stand and then you'd have your meat and cheese stand into a meat.
It really inconvenient to go grocery shopping. Cause you had to go to all these different stands. So it wasn't very fun. And so I have a much greater appreciation for the American grocery stores now and actually excited to cook because I had the contrast of not having it.
So, if you were someone who has a hard time finding motivation to cook or make balanced meals or meal prep, whatever that looks like to you, I want you to think about. Well, what would happen if you ate out for every meal, what would you actually miss about eating at home? Would you miss the lightness of the meals?
The freshness that's something I missed is restaurant meals tend to be a bit more oily and heavy and greasy. And I really miss just having like a light, fresh salad. So enjoy the contrast of yes you have the kitchen and yes you get out to eat and because you have both of those, it makes it more fun.
So when you can except, or even better appreciate the contrast of life, emotional eating will disappear.
When you feel sadness and you say it's okay, that I'm sad. Then you're not going to want to go to food Fritz. Or if you can say, I even appreciate the fact that I'm sad because it shows that I've been happy before. Right then not only do you not want to escape that emotion, but you're actually welcoming it with open arms and hint, hint.
When you welcome the emotion with open arms and you actually appreciate it, it doesn't last as long. This sadness doesn't feel so sticky. It doesn't feel like it sticks around for days. It comes, you feel it. And then it leaves
A big mistake. I see almost everyone out there in the world and making every client, every well-meaning coach and therapist is that they try to learn the skill of being happy instead of the skill of being with the sadness. Okay. I want you to hear that again. Stop trying to learn the skill of being happy. And instead learn the skill of being with your sadness.
What I mean by this is a lot of people teach you tools with the only purpose of it being to get out of your current emotional state. Everyone is trying to teach you, how can you stop being depressed? How can you stop being angry? How can you stop being overwhelmed? How can you stop being frustrated?
And while these skills are yes, critically important, it's missing this core idea that sometimes we just need to feel these negative emotions. Sometimes we just need to sit with them. Well, you're not going to be happy 24 7. And when we try to do that, it creates a lot of additional problems and a lot of additional resistance that doesn't need to be there.
We don't always need to go for a walk or call a friend or journal when we are feeling these negative emotions. There are options and good options indeed. But sometimes the best thing you can do is literally just close your eyes and say, I'm allowed to feel this. I'm allowed to send this emotion. This emotion is allowed to be here with me. I don't need to make it go away because I'm safe to feel it.
Sometimes we even want to feel these negative emotions. When someone passes away, we want to feel sad. When we get fired from a job. We might want to feel, let down and disappointed for a minute because we liked that job. We don't necessarily need to move into the happiness right away of how can I look at this as an opportunity that can come next? But sometimes we just want to feel that sadness, these negative emotions, because it gives the contrast to being the happy we were happy 100% of the time. We wouldn't know happy. We wouldn't know what it means to be happy, but it's because we don't have the happiness all the time that it feels so good.
I sometimes see people start emotional eating after quitting something else like drinking, smoking, and maybe this has happened to you where you've given up something you can, oh, okay. I've stopped drinking, but now I'm overeating more or I've stopped smoking, but now I'm eating more. Or I've stopped using drugs and now I'm eating more. I stopped going into this toxic relationship, but now I'm eating more. And when this happens, it's because you haven't learned the core skill yet of allowing emotions. This is a skill everyone needs. If you want to be successful in your life, if you want to be someone who's in the top 1% of people who have an amazing life. They get there by allowing these emotions.
So, if you are continuing to escape from the negative emotions, looking for something to buffer your way out of it. You will never get there. You will never get to where you want to be because you just go from distraction to distraction, to distraction, to try to get out of these emotions.
The truth is we can never escape having some portion of our life in the negative. You just can't. Celebrities feel sad. Famous people feel sad. Rich people feel sad. You see sad stories all the time of people taking their own life. Even if you think from the outside, it looks like they have it all. It looks like they have everything that I could want.
They're fit. They're skinny. They have personal trainers. They have a personal chef. They have private jets. They have all the money, any guy that would want them could want them. And yet they still don't feel good all the time.
So I want to leave you today. With the greater, the contrast you have in your life. The more alive you will feel.
And the whole purpose of life is to feel alive, to feel the depth of emotion, to feel the contrast, have a good week, accept the contrast and love it.