Do you feel like food takes up way too much of your mental and emotional energy?
If you’ve tried:
All the diets
Going to the gym
Personal trainers
Fitness classes
Bariatric surgery
the list can go on and on…
And yet you are:
Still focused on food too much
Uncomfortable with your body
Trapped in negative thinking
then it is time for a different approach.
Old school approaches like:
Waiting for the “best” diet that you don’t have to think about.
Starting a new exercise plan and hoping that you’ll stick with it.
Believing that having a better “mindset” will melt away the stress that leads to stress eating.
The reality is that old school approaches just don’t address the core of the problem.
I can help you to specifically identify the emotions behind problem eating and support you in transforming them, so that they are the foundation of a healthy relationship with food.
Does it feel like you’re thinking about food all day and night?
Do you eat when you're not hungry or avoid food when you are?
Do you plan your day around what you plan to eat and sometimes all your plans go out the window?
Eating or on the other hand under-eating is one way to cope with stressful situations in life.
The odd thing is that it is not really about the food—except for when it is.
If you struggle with food-mood problems you may experience any of the following:
Eating until stuffed most of the time
Eating very fast and unable to slow down
Can’t get your mind off of food
Constantly grazing
Avoid eating when you’re hungry
When you feel like this you might feel like you’re missing out and unable to enjoy eating and avoiding fun situations so you don’t have to stress out about food.
It’s like you’re on the outside watching others have the life you want to live.
How do I know if Emotional Eating or Stress Eating is really a problem?
Eating problems are known by many different names:
binge eating
emotional eating
compulsive eating
food addiction
overeating
careful eating
orthorexia
even the label “healthy eater” often means something other than well-rounded nutrition.
Any of these labels can signal a problem with food.
What this really means is that your relationship with food is a problem.
Food, either too little or too much, provides comfort for the pain in your life. The good news is that you don’t have to heal alone.
Top-down model…
Many programs or methods encourage focusing on the underlying issues with the hope that problem eating will go away on its own because now you know why you do what you do.
Bottom-up model…
Another method is to focus on the food behaviors and somehow you will learn to manage emotions differently and not use food as a coping mechanism.
Fortunately learning how to become a Conscious Eater combines the best of both worlds!
Conscious Eating helps you learn how to calm anxiety, move through depression and create new habits.
New coping skills can be learned at any age and you can enjoy life.
Even if you have struggled with food issues, eating disorders, emotional eating or stress eating for many years, a better relationship with yourself and food is possible.
You can learn how to become a Conscious Eater and leave problem eating behaviors in the past.
When stress hits and all you can think about is comfort eating, if you’re like a lot of my clients think you may feel like there is “something wrong with you.”
Emotional eating and stress eating are attempts to soothe yourself, lift your spirits and get some relief.
You need a break and shutting out the world, the thoughts, and the feelings is a temporary fix.
Emotional eating and stress eating may help in the short run, but stress will return, that’s the one thing we can be sure of in life.
The stress you try to soothe with food leaves you with even more shame about your eating habits. Focusing on controlling food rather than working with the emotions that lead you to food in the first place doesn’t work either.
Fortunately, there is an antidote.
You can experience food freedom when you become a Conscious Eater and I can show you what you need to do to have it.
We’ll work on:
changing the old patterns and habits that hold you back
creating new habits that you feel good about
get moving forward in your life
My success rate for helping, mostly women, has consistently averaged 80-90 percent reduction in problem eating behaviors in the first three months of working together! While I cannot guarantee that you will experience the same results, what I can do is teach you how to be a Conscious Eater.
You don’t have to be alone in this.
I will guide you in the process to:
end chronic dieting
end the binge-restrict cycle
create new non-food solutions for anxious/sad/bored/entertainment eating
rediscover a healthy relationship with your body
improve communication skills—your own internal self-talk as well as communication with others
Regardless of what is happening in your life or your relationship with food, there is a solution.
You can have positive, kind, loving, and most of all, a fulfilling relationship with yourself, your body, and others.