A COMFORT EATERS NEW LOVE AFFAIR

Have your stress factors started to creep into 2016 already? 

Do you cope with your stress by comfort eating? 

Are you still looking for that magic wand to stop you falling into this trap?

Sadly, I am not the answer to your prayers. I have no magic wand. However, I can offer a few tips that I find useful. Firstly let’s get something straight from the start, we are surrounded by messages about healthy eating, dieting, weight loss and body image that for many of us only reinforce our inner ‘Not Good Enough’ belief whenever we slip back into comfort eating. The problem with this is that such negative and limiting self-beliefs create within us even more stress.

It’s somewhat like a hole in the road that you want to avoid but you just keep falling into it. I know because I’ve been falling in my hole repeatedly for years! One of the problems is believing that you can permanently avoid the hole and never comfort eat again. For most of us this is an impossible dream. 

So what do we focus on?

 

Now here comes a completely new paradigm shift – you focus on self-love. Think about it for a moment. Would we force feed someone we love with food they do not need? So why do we do it to ourselves? The answer is that our dieting culture is not providing us with the keys to help us love ourselves more to be able to manage our comfort eating effectively. It just exacerbates the situation by the guilt that is felt when we fall back into the comfort eating hole.

After a lifetime of battling with my size, weight and comfort eating I have developed some keys to help kick start my jet pack to get out of my hole. 

I hope you will find them useful…..

1.   Realise as soon as possible that your stress is on the rise and you are back in the hole again.
   
   
2.   Believe that you deserve all the love you can give yourself.
   
   
3.  Accept the situation with love and without judgement or self-criticism. This is so important because negative sel-talk only leads to rebellion and more stress.
   
   
4.  Ask the rebellious child within, who is stamping their feet and shouting loudly “I WANT THAT FOOD”, what would help reduce their stress and the need to eat.
   
   
5. Consider what self-loving actions you could take right away to reduce your stress.
   
   
6. Plan ongoing self-loving actions that will reduce your stress and keep it under control.

                                 i.      Deal with the stresses you have influence over and let go of the rest

                                 ii.      Include, in every day, some form of exercise, yoga, meditation or outside activity

                                 iii.    Make sure you do something every day that ‘feeds your soul’ (brings you inner

                          peace, satisfaction and joy)

      7.   Get the support you need from empathetic, positive people who will encourage your
           self-loving actions. 

      8.   Before eating anything carefully consider…

a.       Am I actually hungry for food or hungry for love?

b.      If the answer is food, what foods would be self-loving to your body (Those that fill your with energy)

c.       If the answer is love, consider what self-loving action you can take as soon as possible. Reach out for love from yourself and not for food.

d.      What food you are craving. Never deny your cravings as this only makes you eat more. Tell yourself you can have a sensible portion and then ask yourself again if you really want it. (9 times out 0f 10, when I do this, I no longer want what I have craved. Then I easily chose a more self-loving food and without any rebellion because we always want what we think we cannot or believe we should not have)

e.      What size of portion you will eat.

f.        Learning to love your ‘Just Full’ button.

Try these tips out and let me know how they work for you. I would love to hear from you.