Ep 7- Sitting with Emotions WITHOUT Food

March 21, 2024

Ready to stop emotional eating?

In this episode, I dive into how to embrace all the various emotions of life.

Eating when you’re overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, loney, or tired isn’t uncommon, but will leave you feeling worse off than better.

Food isn’t the solution, so it’s time to discover how to handle emotions without food!

You will learn…

• What emotions really are

• 3 steps to process emotions without food

• The importance of self compassion to emotional resiliency

Hello, my confident eaters and happy Thursday. If you haven't recognized this podcast comes out every single Thursday morning time. So you'll have it just in time for the weekend to get yourself refocused for the week. This past weekend, I went shark diving here in Oahu. I have one week left in Hawaii and then I go back to Colorado.

Shark diving was exactly as it sounds. It was quite terrifying for the first few minutes, but then it was one of the most magical experiences I've ever had. So cool. The sharks did say like 10 to 15 feet at least away at all times so it wasn't too bad, but would highly recommend if you're ever in Hawaii or sometimes you can go shark somewhere You can go shark diving.

It was a great time So today I'm gonna be talking to you about sitting with your emotions and not turning to food the problem that most of us are dealing with is when we feel anything emotionally that we don't want to be feeling We turn to food and I was definitely in this boat. You are not alone with this Most people today do not know how to handle their emotions So they're going to something whether it's food, drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, everyone has something, TikTok Because most of us don't know how to handle our emotions.

So When you have emotionally eaten many times It becomes a habit. You've eaten from stress, and now every time you're stressed, your brain says, you want food. You ate when you were bored, and now every time you're bored, your brain suggests food. This is how our habits work, right? And many of these situations may seem familiar to you.

Or you go to food from feeling overwhelmed with all that's going on at work, stress about family life, or personal relationship struggles. Maybe you're feeling unloved or unworthy. This was always my big thing.

Whenever I felt rejected by, especially dating, by a man, or I felt rejected in my work life, in something that I was hoping and didn't go well. Those were always my lowest moments where I would go to food because I just would feel totally hopeless and want to give up. Feeling drained at the end of a long work day. I mean, who hasn't been there? Lonely, hopeless, after eating so long with no progress and working on it.

All of these things be examples that you resonate with where you go to food from your feelings.

The problem is, though, it never works. And that is why you are here today, is because you recognize that when you eat emotionally, nothing changes and you always feel worse. Because food can only solve hunger. It can't solve any other problem, because that's not what food is for. Food is energy and calories, and it can only do something for us if we need energy and calories.

It's important to know how to sit with your emotions, because I believe in the 50 50 of life. There is always going to be 50 percent negative stuff happening, and then 50 percent positive stuff happening. Or we're always going to feel 50 percent negative, 50 percent positive. Or 50 percent comfortable, 50 percent uncomfortable.

Whatever word you want to use there is fine. Of course, no emotion is good or bad. All emotions are neutral. But we often times describe these emotions as positive or negative to just describe the experience and the comfortability we are with them. But I want you to know at the surface of it, all emotions are just that, emotions.

which are energy in our body. So they are inherently not good or bad. And having the belief that some emotions are bad makes them harder to sit with. If you believe something is bad, you don't want to spend time with it. You want it to go away. You don't want to hang out with anything that's bad. So, I really want you to consider getting rid of this belief that there even are positive and negative emotions in the first place.

And that some are harder to sit with than others. They're all just emotions. You're never going to fully escape the 50 percent negative. And I'm putting quotations around that. So you need to know how to handle that. These emotions of fear, anxiety, overwhelm, shame. Stress, anger, these are all things you're going to feel forever and ever, unfortunately. No human is immune from certain emotions.

There is this huge myth out there that you need to feel better and get out of what you're feeling. That you're supposed to be happy all the time. That there's even an option to be happy all the time. What a myth that is. When you believe that, that's subconsciously telling yourself you can't handle these feelings and they must be avoided.

Which again is not truth. No matter if someone makes a million dollars a year or a hundred dollars a year, they're still going to have some negative emotions. Whether someone is 400 pounds or a hundred pounds, they're also still gonna feel negative emotions. It's part of our human experience. You don't need to change how you're feeling.

Because like I said, emotions are just vibrations in your body. You know that you're feeling a certain way because you're feeling a certain vibration. So for example, anxiety to me tends to feel fast. In my chest, the sensation. And so that's how I know I'm feeling it. Because I'm feeling this vibration.

Energy in motion is emotions. There is no emotion you can't handle. And all emotions pass. They are always temporary. You have never felt one thing forever and ever. You may have felt one emotion for longer than you'd like to feel it. But it always goes away, or maybe you were feeling really sad, but then you saw a funny TikTok, and you started laughing.

Showing you that emotions change, they ebb and flow. Some research shows that the average time you feel an emotion is only 90 seconds before it begins to change and dissipate. How would you show up differently to the emotional experience? If you knew that within 90 seconds this could be gone, if you didn't resist it.

When we resist our emotions, we fight them, we push them away, we try to make them go away faster than they are, that's when they feel so much longer than 90 seconds. Because we're giving so much of our energy to them and that makes things grow. So what do you do when you're feeling an emotion then?

If we're not going to eat, what are we going to be doing? How are we going to sit with these emotions? I have three steps for you. Acknowledge, Accept, and Allow.

Acknowledging your feelings Sounds like completing the sentence. I am feeling blank. That is showing you exactly what you were feeling, and it makes it a feeling versus part of what you are.

So, something people will do a lot is say, I am stressed. I am overwhelmed. I am anxious. But you are not overwhelmed. You are feeling overwhelmed. You are feeling anxious. You are feeling stressed. It is a feeling that you are experiencing, not a part of who you are. And when you can make that separation, that also helps you recognize the temporariness of it.

That it's a feeling, not who you are. So it's a feeling, and this feeling is coming from your thought. All of our feelings are created by thoughts. Never our circumstances. And we know this because people can be in different circumstances and have completely different feelings. You can put a hundred people in the world together, and if you were to do something, they would have a hundred different thoughts about it.

So acknowledging that what you're feeling is coming from your thoughts is important, even if you don't know what your thoughts are in that moment. You can just acknowledge that you're the one creating that feeling from a place of responsibility because that means you know how to change it. I teach my clients a tool called the Thought Model in my Confident Eater program, and this is what really helps you get clear on where your thoughts are coming from and how we can change them.

We do a lot of thought shifting, a lot of mindset work.

So the second step is accepting. Accepting looks like not getting mad at what you're feeling and getting curious instead. Saying it's okay that this feeling is here. It's not going to hurt me. I'm safe to feel this. I want you to think about it like you're having tea with this emotion.

You guys are just hanging out. You and this emotion are on a first date. You're getting to know each other. Think about giving it a hug. Look at what it's trying to tell you, or do for you. Because our emotions are wise. Sometimes they are not so wise, I will say that. Sometimes they do come up with some crazy things.

But a lot of times, they're just trying to let us know something. I think anger is a really good example of this. When you're really angry at someone for something they did, that could be a sign that they crossed the boundary and did something you weren't okay with something that goes against your morals and values.

So you want that anger to be there. You want to know that something is not aligning with who you want to be. Think about if you were. In a committed relationship and the partner cheated, you're angry at them for that? Of course you would be, because the anger is letting you know that this person is not in line with how you want them to be for your ideal partner.

So really get curious and investigate, what can I learn from this emotion? And because all of our emotions are coming from our thoughts, it's going to give us a lot of insight on our thoughts and therefore the results we're creating. So use them as flags in your head to go in deeper

Finally and third allowing the emotion to be there What helps to allow emotions is to get out of your head and into your body

When we get stuck up in our head with all the thoughts going through it It's hard to Get clarity and process those emotions because there's just a whirlwind of thoughts happening. So what it means to go into your body is dropping down into the physical sensations you are having. So when you are stressed, for example, maybe you feel some tightness in your stomach or your chest area.

Maybe the energy feels fast in your body. I'm just giving you examples. There's no right or wrong answer here with how an emotion feels to you. But looking at does it have a color, a temperature, a texture, a speed, a location? Does it look like something as a metaphor? All of these will help you get through the emotion so much faster than just thinking about it.

Observe without judgment what's going on for you in that present moment. Be an explorer who's curious and interested to see what's going on more in depth. And really breathe into the feeling, reminding yourself you can handle it. You always have handled your emotions. You're still here today. Every emotion that's ever come up, the good, the bad, the hard, the easy, you've always made it through.

100 percent of the time. Those are pretty good odds. 100 percent of the time you've handled it, it's pretty good odds you can handle it this time. And it will pass. So just take some deep breaths, breathe into it, create space within that emotion. with where you're feeling it. If you're feeling it in your chest, breathe into your chest. If you're feeling it in your hands, breathe into your hands.

So, I'll leave you with this question. Anytime you're feeling these emotions, I want you to ask yourself, what do I really need in this moment? And do your best to give yourself that, but also know you will be okay even if you can't give yourself what you need in that moment. If you are tired and you need a nap, but you're at work, it's okay to wait and remind yourself you're getting sleep tonight. You don't have to give it to yourself in that moment. I don't want you to think if I can't give myself a 30 minute walk and nap and a snuggle that I have to act and I have to eat this food now. You can still sit with the part of the emotions that feels hard.

Nothing bad is going to happen. And how can you give yourself so much love and compassion for what you're feeling? You're a human being experiencing a difficult emotion. It kind of feels painful sometimes. How can you give yourself a big hug metaphorically or literally to help yourself get through it, to be your own best friend, to have your own back?

Because the gentler you are with yourself, the easier it will be to move through your emotions with food. Always. When we beat ourself up, when we give ourself a hard time for feeling what we're feeling, when we're angry with ourself, that is when we want to escape it because it's not comfortable to be angry with ourself.

So if we can be kind and compassionate, the odds of going to food are going to be so much lower, and we'll work through it in a much healthier way, or start to learn to sit with these emotions. All right, go out there and practice, practice, practice. This skill is one that will serve you in every area of life.

You can practice sitting with your emotions any time, not just when you want food. Have a good week, everyone. I'll talk to you later.