Your Feelings About Food Matter

I believe in science and the physiology behind food and why it is either helpful or harmful. All that knowledge is great, but what I don’t hear a lot of health professionals discussing or trying to understand in their patients is their feelings about why they are eating the way they do in the first place.

Our reasons for wanting to change our lifestyles are important. They might be more important than what we are changing in the first place!

When I made a lifestyle transformation it was to change how I felt.

When I first heard the saying “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” I thought, what a bunch of garbage. Skinny isn’t a feeling.

Then I realized, actually “skinny” is associated with a lot of feelings.

A skinny person is often viewed as disciplined, a hard worker, a go-getter, healthy, and put together.

When we don’t feel “skinny” we feel like we aren’t disciplined. We feel we aren’t a hard worker. We feel we aren’t put together.

We feel we aren’t as valuable.

What if I told you that the kind of person you are is not about what the number on the scale is?

What if you could learn to associate feeling like you are disciplined, a hard worker, a go-getter, healthy, put together?

Ultimately you have to realize that the action to eat or not to eat is directly related to how you feel. Often times it is how you feel about yourself.

We eat when we feel hungry (emotionally or physically.)

We don’t eat when we feel full.

We eat when we feel bored.

We do or don’t eat when we feel guilty.

We eat when we feel sad.

We do or don’t eat when we feel ashamed.

We eat to celebrate.

We do or don’t eat when we feel depressed.

We eat to fuel our bodies.

We don’t eat when we feel food is unappealing.

We eat to reward ourselves.

We eat to feel good.

We do or don’t eat to punish ourselves.

To change an undesired behavior we have to be in tune with our feelings. We have to understand why we have formed the undesired habit in the first place.

So how can you change? What can you do?

Behaviors are just strong habits. All we have to do is create new ones.

Slowly, with inner dialogue training, my clients begin to see how the way they talk to themselves results in their behaviors and actions. Not only does this help with emotional eating but with all other aspects of their lives.

Do any of these thoughts or feelings ring true to you personally? Then let’s get to work