But do you feel truly connected to your body? Do you listen to your body when it’s trying to chat?

Do you trust your body?

If not, your body connection may be in need of a little reboot. Here are some tools to get you started.

Disclaimer: This information is not designed to take the place of individual medical or mental health advice. If you feel triggered by this content or need further support, contact a mental health professional or organization in your area.

What’s getting in the way of my connection?

Connection to your body can be undermined by many things. Sometimes it’s as simple as a stressful, busy week. But sometimes it can be a lot deeper than that. Start to scratch away at the surface here and see what’s going on. For most people, it’s a bit of an “onion situation” where there are lots of layers to peel back. Journaling can be a good tool to start the process.

If you come up against some heavy things or feel triggered reach out for support. Trauma can be a trigger for body disconnection so make sure you get support as needed.

What (or who) am I listening to instead?

If you aren’t listening to your body then chances are you are listening to something or someone else. Are you all up in your own head all the time? Listening to your thoughts and getting swept away by them? Or maybe you are outsourcing – listening to an external set of rules when it comes to food instead of your hunger; listening to the constant message to hustle and be ‘busy’ instead of listening to your body’s cues to rest. Knowing what (or who) has your attention can help in the subsequent steps.

How can I be more present in my body?

Mindfulness is a great tool for getting into the present moment. If your answer to the question above showed that you are mostly in your head, then mindfulness will probably be your go-to strategy to bring the connection back. And it doesn’t have to be all complicated or intense. I like Brené Brown’s pared back definition of mindfulness as simply “being aware.”

What activities could you bring mindfulness to in your day? Do you have space to add in meditation or check out these strategies for being more mindful.

Again, a small disclaimer here that mindfulness around trauma should be done with the help of a professional that is trained in this area.

Do I need to build trust in my body again?

If you’re feeling disconnected from your body, you may be hearing its messages loud and clear but simply not trusting them. It’s understandable really, we are bombarded with so much messaging around why our body can’t be trusted, especially around food and health choices. So, it may be that you need to build your trust.

A simple exercise is to make a big list of all the functions and activities that you innately trust your body to do. Start from your toes and make your way up your body – inside and out, body parts and senses – listing all the things your body does for you that you trust in without even thinking about.

Here are a few to get you started:

• Toes – balance your feet on the ground
• Heart – pump blood around your body and keep you alive
• Touch – tells you when things are hot or sharp
• Kidneys – filter your blood

When you feel your trust wavering you can use this list to rewrite any stories you may be telling yourself about your body and trust. Your body’s got your back. It’s time to trust in that again.

Do I need to make space for body connection?

Do you need to clear any physical, mental or emotional barriers to connection? Your answers to the first two questions might give you a head start. Some things may be easy to do yourself by simply working on your self talk, reducing the stress in your day or literally clearing your schedule to feel less busy. But other areas may need more support and strategies – either ones you can research yourself or with the support of a professional.

What activities make me feel connected to my body?

Is there anything you currently do, or have done in the past, that brings you in connection to your body? Any activities where you move out of your head and thoughts and focus purely on your body? Perhaps it’s jumping on the yoga mat or hitting the D-floor. Or maybe it’s dusting off some activities from childhood like a hula hoop?

It can also be less obvious activities where you connect to one part of your body like kneading bread or a self massage. There are no right or wrong answers – you’re simply looking for activities that bring your body into focus in a fun or functional way.

Make a big ol’ list of activities that bring you into connection with your body. How often are these activities part of your day or week? Where could you add them in?

Over to you

Body connection is the most natural thing in the world. But sometimes it can get undermined, tuned out or simply swept to the side in the busy rush of life.

Time to reboot that connection and all the benefits that come with it so you can truly live your best life.

If you’re like most women I’ve worked with, chances are you’ll go straight to the head.

Perhaps you’ll think about what you feel like for a nanosecond, but pretty soon any connection to what you feel in your body will be overtaken by your thoughts. Perhaps you’ll run through the list of shoulds and shouldn’ts. Or maybe you’ll do a mental calculation around what you’ve already eaten that day and try to balance your choice in that way.

Either way, for the most part, we make lots of our food choices in our heads. But, we actually have at our disposal a more powerful tool when it comes to making these decisions. A tool that was actually built for the job and one that’s been programmed from birth to tell us exactly what we need to eat, when we need to eat and how much we need to eat.

Your body.

What’s so important about the food-body connection?

Many of the systems in your body operate on a giant feedback loop. The body sends a message, you respond and the body reacts based on that message.

For example, when your bladder is full, the body sends a message to go to the toilet, you go to the toilet, the bladder empties, the message stops. However, if you ignore the signal to go, your bladder isn’t emptied and the body sends out a stronger signal. This continues until you empty your bladder…either by choice or when your body takes matters into its own hands.

The same system is in place when you touch something hot, need refueling or need to rest to fight off illness. The body gives you messages and then adjusts based on your reaction.

The great thing is that when we listen to our body, trust the signals it sends us and act on them, then we maximize our connection to our body and improve our health. We become attuned to the signals our body sends and our body relaxes in the knowledge that all is well.

When we connect to our body around food our body sends us great signals about when to eat (hunger), and how much we need at any one time (satisfaction). When the connection is strong we can also pick up on times when we don’t eat enough or eat past satisfaction. We have, at our disposal, all the information to nourish ourselves.

What happens when we don’t connect?

When we fail to react to the signals our body gives us, we are giving it a specific message via the feedback loop – we aren’t listening. Our body then reacts accordingly.

And what happens when we do this around food, particularly by restricting food or not eating when we need?

When you try to control your food intake using external rules or go on a diet (even if it’s branded as a wellness kick or detox) you are sending messages to your body. If you’re not eating enough your body will give you a cue to eat, if you don’t listen and don’t eat it will ramp up that cue.

Eventually your body will take matters into its own hands. Your drive to eat will increase. You’ll start obsessing about food and thinking constantly about the ice-cream in the freezer. You will get to a point where you eat, maybe even binge. You’ll blame yourself for not having willpower or falling off the wagon or not wanting it enough.

But the truth? You can’t control your body’s drive to survive. Which is why it makes sense to strengthen your food-body connection and work with your body.

But, sometimes it’s not that simple…

What gets in the way of our food-body connection?

Many things can get in the way of this system working:

– Your experiences around eating
– The messages you’ve been given around food and your body
– Your body’s signals repeatedly ignored – fasting, dieting, cutting out a lot of foods
– ‘In your head’ around food
– External rules to control food (control is an illusion)
– Trauma that triggers protective behaviors that disconnect you from your body
– Medications that interfere with your appetite
– Eating disorders and other mental health conditions

These factors either reduce your trust in your body or give your body the message that you can’t be trusted to listen to and meet it’s needs.

And while some of the factors above are complex, there is always opportunities to rebuild your connection to your body.

Our body is an amazing feedback system of information. And it’s so so so ready to chat. The question is often: are you ready to listen?

Are you ready to drown out the diet dogma and health messages that undermine your connection? Are you ready to quit outsourcing your health? Are you ready to be the expert in your experience and your own mental, physical and emotional health?

Instead we hear about making a lifestyle change, working on a wellness plan, clean eating or whole foods only. But how healthy are these healthy eating rules really? Do they actually help us to connect to our body or are they just a diet in disguise?

It’s pretty clear that diets don’t work. The research shows they fail 95% of people and all long-term follow up shows that people who diet either end up heavier or back to their starting weight. Diets are restrictive, incompatible with real life and actually turn your body into a fat storing machine.

What’s a girl to do instead? Enter the “wellness diet” or “healthy lifestyle change.” Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes people really do adopt healthy lifestyle changes and improve their wellness. But, sometimes these changes can merely be diets operating under another name.

So, how can you tell if your healthy eating plan is a diet in disguise? Well, read on.

1. Foods have labels

I’m not talking package labels but moral labels. You know the ones: good vs bad; allowed vs forbidden; clean vs toxic. When we use these types of words to label our foods, we are placing a moral judgement on the foods we eat. And, when it comes to virtues and morals, food is just food. Food didn’t betray anyone. Food never stole anyone’s TV.

Moralizing food is all based on an arbitrary set of rules and beliefs. This is a diet.

“But what about the nutritional value?” I hear you scream through the interwebs. Yes, all foods have a different level of nutrients, but unless you’re eating plastic food, all food gives us nutritional value. All foods have their place.

Plus food is so much more than the sum of its parts. Food gives us comfort, connection, nourishment and enjoyment. When we label our foods and reduce them to simply what they offer us nutrient-wise, we miss this important part of food’s role. We aren’t eating well, we are dieting.

2. You have to track what you eat

Do you have to count your macros? Pop deets into your Fitbit? Weigh your food?

Awareness is an important part of healthy eating. It’s good to be connected to what you eat but sometimes tracking can get a little obsessive. It also can emphasize control.

In this case, it’s all about intention. What is the purpose of tracking?

If it’s about control or “checking up” then you’re on a diet. Normal, flexible eating is just that – flexible.

3. It’s harder to socialize around food

Does the way you eat make it harder to head out for a bite with friends? Does it get you a little stressed out about social functions? Are you worried there won’t be foods that you can eat? Worried that you won’t be able to “stay on track” or stay in control?

This is a red flag. Diets are all about control. Social situations will have you stressed because you simply can’t control what’s available to eat.

Healthy eating includes flexibility. It also incorporates the role of food in connection to people –– which boosts our physical, emotional and mental health.

4. Total energy or calories are limited

Does your healthy eating detox come with a calorie count? Are there only a certain amount of points you can eat in a day on your wellness plan?

Yep, you guessed it. This is a diet.

Our daily calorie needs actually fluctuate depending on what we do in a day. When we listen to our physical cues of hunger and satisfaction, we can adjust our intake to meet these changes. When we follow a diet, we are told to stick to a certain number, or at least below a certain number.

Generally a diet will under-fuel you. And yes, this will lead to weight loss in the short term – which is what diets are all about. But it wont lead to a healthy relationship to food and it’ll leave you with some serious rebound eating (and generally rebound weight gain) when it’s all done and dusted.

5. Specific foods or food groups are restricted

If you’re cutting out specific foods, food groups or nutrients, then you are on a diet.

Let’s get real here and cut through all the rules and BS. Unless you have an allergy or diagnosed intolerance to a food, there is no reason to cut it out. Firstly, it’s unsustainable and as per #3 above, makes it hard to live life.

Secondly, it makes it harder to actually get all the things you need from your food. A diet high in variety gives us a better chance of getting all the nutrients we need to actually keep us healthy. Reducing variety by restriction does not.

Restriction also has a couple of bonus (not so fun) side effects – it increases our focus on food, increases food cravings and leads to more emotional eating.

This, again, is about control. It’s a diet…run!

6. Your habits get between you and your body

Does your eating plan encourage you to listen to and honor your body signals like hunger and satisfaction? Or, does it set arbitrary rules on the amounts you eat and encourage you to disconnect from your body’s cues?

One of these is a diet, the other isn’t…I think you can figure out which.

7. You still feel crazy around food

Diets will make you feel crazy around food. Surem while you are on your new “lifestyle transformation plan,” you’ll feel great, energized, in control and completely regular. But once life gets in the way (and doesn’t it always?) the plan goes out the window and the swing-back from the restriction is epic: you feel like a crazy person around food…again!

This is what diets do –– no matter what fancy name they are going under. They set you up for failure; they make you blame yourself for that failure; and they get you to internalize your eating as a problem. The only problem here is the diet. It sets up unrealistic expectations, ridiculous food restriction and rigidity, and it blames you for it all.

What’s the alternative?

Ultimately, we all have to be the experts in our own eating experience. But we wont get there through control. We need curiosity, connection and compassion.

Curiosity to listen to our body, to figure out what feels good, what tastes good and what works for us as individuals. If you have an allergy or there’s an ethical reason why you don’t eat a certain food, then you’ll feel better by not eating it. But if you’re forcing yourself to not eat something even though your body is telling you it needs it, or you’re following strict rules about what and how you can eat, you are following a diet, or at the very least, stuck in “diet mindset.”

We need a connection to our body to learn and follow our physical hunger and satisfaction cues. We need connection to our mental and emotional well-being, so that we can take care of that alongside our physical nourishment.

We also need compassion with ourselves. Compassion when we revert to diet rules. Compassion when we eat in a way that doesn’t work for us. Compassion when we talk to ourselves. We are doing the best we can. It’s okay if we’ve been following “diet mindset” and it’s become ingrained. We can move towards a healthier relationship with food.

It takes time to truly ditch diets and “diet mindset” but all you need to do is start. Start being curious, connected and compassionate with yourself, your body and your food.

It’s so tempting to get swept up in the early New Year momentum of setting goals and taking action…but fast forward to a month or two down the track and if you’re anything like most people then those best laid plans can easily go by the wayside.

But what if you could do 2019 different around food? What if you didn’t need a ‘new’ anything but instead worked on the things you had? What if this year you worked on your relationship to food.

Instead of treading the same old path of cutting foods out, being ‘good’ or white-knuckling your way to change how about going deeper. Looking at the thoughts and behaviours behind eating rather than just what you put in your mouth.

What we eat is important but why we eat can have a bigger impact. It’s actually the key to getting it together around food.

Ditch the restriction

Whether it’s physical restriction of foods or even just the mental restriction of “I can’t have that,” it’s going to get in the way of your eating. The evidence shows that restriction leads directly to an increased desire to eat, pre-occupation with food and eating without connection to our body’s cues. Basically restriction sets us up to disconnect from eating and our bodies. Restriction is definitely worth letting go of in 2019

Practice mindful eating

We all know how powerful mindfulness can be for our health and that extends to food too. Be in the present moment around eating. Use all your senses around food, slow down and be aware of what, when and why you are eating. Take time over your meals and above all enjoy the eating experience.

Learn your body’s cues around food

Did you know you were actually born with the ability to know what, when and how much to eat? Unfortunately, for many of us, this inbuilt food navigation system gets undermined by the messages we get around food, our bodies and our selves.

One of the most powerful tools in your interaction with food is rebooting this food-body connection. Start to build awareness around what hunger feels like in your body and how much of a role it plays in your trigger to eat. At the other end of the meal, cue into your fullness and satisfaction signals. This isn’t meant to be a tool for control but merely a way to get curious and connect to your body around food.

Lose the food labels

Food isn’t good or bad. It didn’t steal your TV or cheat on your bestie. When we label food as good or bad, we are placing a moral judgement on something that is essentially neutral. But even worse, we judge ourselves by extension. That’s not a recipe for improved self worth or health for that matter. You aren’t a ‘bad’ person because you ate a donut and neither are you a ‘good’ person because you started the day with a kale smoothie.

Let food be food and instead, connect to how different foods feel in your body. What foods don’t you like? Stop eating as much of them. What foods make you feel nourished? Eat more of those.

Enjoy eating

We’ve gotten so used to controlling our food that we can forget to connect to it and to actually enjoy it. Food is more than fuel; it’s something that connects us to people, places and time. It’s something that should be enjoyable.

If you’ve lost the enjoyment of food or it’s constantly overshadowed by guilt then it’s time to change all that. And not just because food is darn tasty but because a connection to the enjoyment of food is good for our health.

It’s no coincidence that cultures with a strong food connection also have healthier relationships with food and often better health outcomes than cultures that don’t.

Time to reconnect to the pleasure of eating. Whether it’s trying new foods, eating more variety or adding in some old favorites you are allowed to have fun with food. You can adopt my motto if you like: eat everything you enjoy and enjoy everything you eat.

Schedule in self care

Self care is an essential tool for life. When it comes to food, a lack of self care shows up in a really big way: emotional eating. If you struggle with emotional eating it probably has nothing to do with the actual food and everything to do with how well you are taking care of yourself and how many tools you have to do that. If the only way you can manage stress, loneliness and unhappiness is via food then you might need to build yourself a bigger self care toolkit. Food is a good part of it but you don’t want it to be the only way you look after yourself.

Flex your self compassion muscle

Often judgement is our default around food and our bodies. It can be hard to simply stop judging ourselves and our actions as we move towards a healthier relationship to food. So, instead, we can find the path of least resistance and build up our self compassion muscle instead.

How? Basically treat yourself like you would your best friend, your sister, your mom. If you wouldn’t say it to them or treat them in a certain way then don’t do it to yourself.

Sure it’d be easy to rehash last New Year’s diet, jump on a detox or make some vague resolutions about ‘eating better’ but we both know how that would end. Instead, start working on your relationship with food and eating so that you can truly GYST around food for 2019 and beyond. You are worth it.

But honestly, if it was that simple, we’d all have nailed it by now right?

The truth is that what we eat is only part of the picture. Often, why and how we eat can be just as important, if not more so.

One thing that often gets overlooked when we are working on our eating habits, or just our well-being in general, is how we talk about food. Whether it’s to our bestie over brunch, our co-workers in the break room or ourselves in our head, how we talk about food matters.

If you want to change your relationship with food and eat in a way that nourishes you, then working on the way you talk about food is a must.

Here are some ideas to get you started.

Remove the labels

No, I don’t mean peeling the labels of your packaging – I mean the labels we place on foods to categorize them: healthy/unhealthy; good/bad; clean/toxic. These labels are not helpful.

Food is morally neutral, so it doesn’t need to be judged. All you are doing when you use these labels is ultimately judging yourself (or others) for eating certain foods. You are either “good” for sticking to the rules or “bad” if you don’t and I’m sure you’re no stranger to the kinds of self talk that happens when you eat something “bad.” It’s all negative and shaming.

Also, when you think of foods as good or bad they become either allowed or forbidden, and I’m sure you know what happens when you start thinking of things as forbidden. They become desirable. This sort of thinking actually leads to the very outcomes you are trying to avoid – emotional eating, overeating and over focus on food.

The truth is that it’s this type of thinking, not the foods themselves, that cause us to feel out of control around them.

Work towards an “all foods fit” mindset. Lift the mental restriction and ditch the judgement-laden labels.

Let food be food.

Call off the inner food police

You may not be saying everything out loud but there is a whole lot of talk going on in your head that impacts your relationship with eating.

If you are constantly judging the choices you make, laying out all the food rules and just generally being an inner bully, it’s time to cease and desist.

Get curious about the self-talk you do around food. Is it negative or positive? Is it judgmental or neutral? Is it acting like an inner bully or giving you compassion? You may be surprised about how harsh you can actually be to yourself around eating.

From the food rules, to the “shoulds and shouldn’ts” and those labels again (see above) – we are constantly judging what we eat and by extension, our own worthiness.

The best way to challenge the inner food police is with fact. Use your own experience or go to a reputable source if you need to. Sometimes your thoughts are simply not true. Hard to believe but you really shouldn’t believe everything you say to yourself.

You are not your thoughts.

Rewrite the script

Once you’ve started challenging the way you talk to yourself around food the next step is to change it.

Often we are on auto-pilot when it comes to how we talk around food. What’s the story you are telling yourself and how could it be re-written?

Try to talk in a more positive or neutral way around eating. Self talk can be adjusted to ditch the negative. Being more positive is great but even a bit of neutrality can make a big difference. Here are a few examples to get you started.

– “I shouldn’t eat that.” TO “I can have that if I want it, all food fit, what do I feel like in this moment?”

– “I failed, I’m so hopeless.” TO “Not what I had planned; Is there anything I can take away from this?”

– ‘That food is bad, I need to avoid it.”  TO  “No food is ‘bad'”, when I chose to eat that food how does it make me feel?”

– “I’m no good at this.” TO “I’m learning… I can give it another try.”

– “I’ve failed, again!” TO “Things didn’t work out this time but I can learn from this.”

– “This will never work for me” TO “This is worth a try. What’s the worst that can happen?”

You’ll notice that curiosity is part of the process too. Rather than rely on black and white thinking around food, try and get curious with your self-talk and add some shades of grey.

Set aside some time to re-script. Keep a list of thoughts that pop up and then rework them. It can be helpful to keep a list of your common food thoughts and then alternative re-scripted versions written down and stuck somewhere or saved in your phone so that you can grab it when you need.

In the moment it can be pretty hard to stop and change our auto-pilot thinking. It’s a great idea to practice these things in advance.

Sprinkle in some self-compassion

How often do you direct compassion at yourself?

If you’re anything like the majority of the women I know professionally and personally (including myself!) I’ll take a stab in the dark and guess rarely.

Being self compassionate is not about being self indulgent or letting things slide. Instead it’s simply treating ourselves like we would a best friend.

There are three elements to self compassion:

– Being kind to yourself
– Being aware of thoughts and feelings but not attaching to them
– Recognizing that you are not alone in your experience

The research is pretty clear on this one––the more self compassion we have the better we are at taking care of ourselves and our well-being, and that includes how we eat.

Self-compassion is something we could all do with a little more of.

Changing the way you talk around food takes awareness, curiosity and compassion. But it’s well worth the effort to make a few positive shifts to improve your relationship with food and ultimately your health.

The stress around eating and food choices is often compounded by the emotional nature of the holidays themselves. And all of a sudden a time of year that should be filled with fun and connection ends up being something we dread.

But what if we could do things differently? What if we could reduce the stress around food choices without a restrictive diet or physically hiding in the closet for a few months?

That’s where mindful eating comes in. It’s just the tool we need to help navigate eating over the holiday season.

Becoming a mindful eater is a long term game but we can use the ample opportunities offered up over the festive season to get started. The goal is progress not perfection.

Focus on holiday foods

Maybe it’s Aunt Sue’s famous stuffing or Grandma’s once a year pecan pie. But think about the foods that you associate with holidays. Think about the foods you only get to enjoy at this time of year. These are the foods that strengthen your connection to the holidays and traditions.

Connection to food is an important part of our relationship with it. Food plays so many more roles than simply fueling, so it’s important to acknowledge and honor this.

Action step: Prioritize choosing foods that you only see at this time of year or foods that have a special connection to the holiday period.

Festive eating with awareness

Try to cue into your body and what you really feel like. When you turn up to a festive function peruse the foods on offer and try using this powerful opener:

“I can have anything I want; what do I really feel like? What would feel really satisfying in this moment?”

This is more about cueing into your body and less about using the rules. You’ll notice I didn’t say “What do I need?” or “What is the healthiest option?” Try to truly cue into what foods satisfy you and eat those foods. This can reduce a whole lot of ‘I shouldn’t eat that’ eating. You know what I mean right? You try to avoid eating one thing but end up eating three times more than you actually feel like in an attempt to feel satisfied.

Hitting your satisfaction point can help to reduce food cravings and “out of control” eating. This is because you aren’t depriving yourself of the foods that really hit the mark for you. You’re not eating the dip and vegetable crudite when you really feel like a fruit mince pie – you are listening to your body and eating what you need in that moment to feel fully satisfied.

When we go for satisfaction right out of the gate we can eat, enjoy and move on.

Action step: Instead of focusing on all the food rules cue into your body and what you feel like.

Ditch the guilt

Feeling guilty about what we eat generally leads to one thing: overeating. Either you overeat straight away in a “I’ve blown it now” binge. Or you might dabble in a little restriction first to atone for your “sins” but when the next festive season function appears on your calendar you “fall off the wagon” in spectacular fashion. This is diet mindset thinking––all or nothing and no room for any shades of grey.

And all it does is set you up for feeling pretty crap about yourself.

Instead, try to approach eating as a guilt and judgement-free zone. After all, food didn’t steal anyone’s TV or cheat on your best friend. It doesn’t warrant a moral judgement. Surprisingly, when we ditch the moral labels around food it can be a whole lot easier to approach them in a mindful way.

Action step: When you notice unhelpful thoughts pop up around food imagine them like a fluffy cloud floating across the sky and simply let them float by. No need to hold onto them or buy into the story they are selling.

Don’t forget the self-care

With all the stress involved around the holidays and a busier than normal social schedule it can be easy to end up tired and frazzled. If you find yourself using food as a way to manage emotions this can be even more noticeable.

Before the holiday season gets in full swing make sure you’ve got a full toolbox of self-care strategies and a plan.

Maybe this is saying no to a few events or scheduling in some down time. Perhaps it’s adding in some stress reducing movement, a meditation or another form of mindfulness.

What do you need to keep your stress levels manageable?

Action step: Schedule self-care into the holiday calendar.

Mindful eating is not about perfection, it’s about practice, awareness and compassion. The holidays are a great time to get started on mindful eating or to strengthen your skills if you’ve already begun. There’s no need to write off the whole festive season or wait until the first of January to prioritize you and your relationship to food.

The holiday season is the perfect time to eat, drink and be mindful.

Most clients I talk to about emotional eating are looking to control or stop it, because they feel out of control with food when their emotions are heightened. And generally they’re referring to negative emotions and high pleasure foods – no one’s celebrating a promotion with a broccoli binge; they’re eating their stress away with a tub of ice cream. So, what’s going on?

The truth about emotional eating

Emotional eating can be a normal reaction to diets and restriction. That’s right––normal.

The research into restrictive eating, whether through starvation or self-imposed dieting, consistently show that restriction leads to increased eating binges, preoccupation with food and an increased reaction to emotions using food. It’s the very thing we are using to control our food that is making us feel ‘out of control.’

But it goes further than this––emotions actually increase eating in restrictive eaters. They turn off the appetites of people who don’t restrict. It’s not the emotions causing the eating, it’s the mindset and behaviors of the eater, namely the restriction. People who don’t restrict actually eat less in response to emotions.

So, if it’s not the emotions, what is actually going on?

If we aren’t eating enough food, our body is going to start getting pretty fixated on it. This is a survival mechanism so that in times of famine we actually seek out food. The human race wouldn’t have lasted long if we all just lounged in the shade and didn’t bother to go hunting or gathering when we needed food.

As luck would have it, we are born with a feedback system that triggers our ‘go hunt’ drive when food is low. These days it triggers our “go to the fridge” drive when we are on a diet. This is what we are actually “doing battle” with when we restrict food – not surprising that restrictive eating plans all end up failing at some point; we just can’t compete with our body’s inbuilt drive to survive.

The other thing going on is the disconnection to our body. When we follow external rules and cues to guide our food intake, we don’t cue into our body. What happens over time is we get less sensitive to our internal food drive and more sensitive to external cues and triggers. And, as mentioned above, the research shows people who use external cues (aka restrictive eaters) are the ones that end up reacting to their emotions using food.

The perfect storm hits when we couple our body’s drive to survive with a stressful day or a situation that has us feeling a little vulnerable. We’re led to believe it’s a lack of willpower or the out of control nature of emotional eating, but it’s just that our inbuilt body cues can’t be ignored any longer: cue “emotional eating”, which is actually survival eating as far as our body is concerned.

And of course, the foods we reach for are generally the foods that the “diet” has told you is off-limits. This is the forbidden factor at work. Forbidden foods become all the more alluring to the restrictive eater, especially when there is an external trigger like emotions.

The truth is that emotional eating is normal. Unless you are a robot, chances are you felt emotions while eating today. There is nothing wrong with emotional eating. The reason it feels so “wrong” or “out of control” is because of all the dieting rules.

Emotional eating can actually be a good thing

It’s important to note that emotional eating can actually be a useful tool to help soothe us. It does have a place in our self care toolbox. However, we want to build our connection to our body so that we can eat in a way that actually nourishes us and gives us what we need. Often I find with clients there are a couple of things going on that can lead to the feeling of ‘out of control’ emotional eating:

When food is the only option for comfort. It’s important to have a variety of strategies that help us take care of ourselves. Food can definitely be part of this, but we don’t want it to be our only strategy.

When we use food in a disconnected way. It’s important to cue into our body when we need comfort and ask “what do I need in this moment to feel taken care of?” If it is food, it’s also good to check in around what will actually make you feel comforted in any one moment. It may not always be the big sugar-hit that dieting has made us believe is necessary (then again it might) – the key is connection to your body, not the external rules and prompts.

4 steps to change your relationship with emotional eating.

1. Ditch the diet rules and calorie restrictions.

Learn to listen to your in-built hunger and satisfaction cues to help guide your food intake. If you give your body the fuel it needs, it’s less likely to feel the need for any famine induced survival eating (or bingeing).

2. Eat all the things.

Unconditional permission to eat is really important. This helps with restriction but it also takes away the forbidden factor. The reason people don’t binge out on broccoli or apples is because they’re not forbidden foods. When you are eating build, your connection to food in the moment and flex your mindful eating muscles.

3. Stop trying to control emotional eating.

Repeat after me: emotional eating is not the problem. Look to the factors behind the emotional eating (not the emotions as such but the restricting) and also remember that it’s OK to eat when feeling emotions (phew, no frontal lobotomy required).

4. Build up your self-care tool box.

This is not to stop or replace emotional eating but to give you options when you need to take care of yourself. Sometimes food will be the best option available to soothe yourself and sometimes it’ll be something else. When you have a toolbox full of self care options (including food) you can find the right tool for the job.

Ready to ditch the restriction and embrace the emotions?

References:

Adriaanse, M & Evers, C 2016 ‘I ate too much so I must have been sad’: Emotions as a confabulated reason for eating. Appetite. V103, p318-323.

Bacon, Linda 2010 Health at Every Size: the surprising truth about your weight. BenBella Books, Dallas.

Bongers, P & Jansen, A 2016 Emotional Eating is not what you think it is and emotional eating scales do not measure what you think they measure. Frontiers in Psychology. V7 p1932-6

Peneau, S et al 2013 Sex and dieting modify the association between emotional eating and weight status. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. V97:6, p1307-1313.

Polivy, J 1996 Psychological consequences of food restriction. J Am Diet Assoc. v96 p589-592.

Mindful eating is simply being in the present moment when you eat. It’s about noticing what’s going on inside and outside of you. Using all your senses to interact with food. Not just taste, but smell, sight and texture too. It also includes cueing into what your body is telling you about hunger and satisfaction. This helps you to recognize when your body needs fuel and when it’s giving you signals that it’s had enough.

Mindful eating also includes being aware of your thoughts and feelings around food without judgement. Mindfulness helps us to recognize our thoughts without clinging to them or engaging with them. The analogy I like to use is watching a white fluffy cloud floating across the sky – we see it come and then we see it go. This can be a pretty tricky part of the process. We are so used to interacting with food through our thoughts – what, when and how much we should or shouldn’t eat. We follow a list of prescribed food rules or eating beliefs and we forget to connect to our body.

For me, this is the most powerful benefit of mindful eating.

When we connect to our body around food and eat mindfully we can:

– Reduce emotional eating and binging
– Increase our awareness of physical cues around food – hunger, satisfaction and fullness
– Reduce the role of outside info (like time of day) on our food intake
– Reduce overall food cravings and that ‘out of control’ feeling around food

Sounds good, right? So, how can we become more mindful eaters?

3 steps to mindful eating

Step 1: Reboot our food-body connection

This is all about getting in the habit of listening to the messages from our body around food and meals. Our bodies are built to let us know when they need to eat and when they’ve had enough. This process is just like the cues we get to go to the toilet. Unfortunately, we get disconnected from this inbuilt signaling system by all the messages we hear around food, eating and health. It’s time to reboot our food-body connection and take a moment to listen to and trust our body around food.

Get started actions:

Take a moment to pause and note any physical sensations

– Before you eat simply ask yourself, “Am I hungry?” and see what your body is telling you–yes, no or maybe?

– At the end of the meal, take a moment to cue into how you feel physically. Have you eaten enough, not quite enough or more than is comfortable for you in that moment?

Step 2: Connect to all our senses when we eat

Food is more than just fuel. One of the big reasons we eat is because of enjoyment – this is a really important part of eating and should be celebrated, not censored. When we connect to all our senses around food we can maximize this enjoyment. We can also get a better picture of the things about food that work for us as individuals, like what is your favorite texture, what visuals are appealing for you and what isn’t. Life’s too short to eat food you don’t enjoy and to miss out on the enjoyment of the food you are eating.

Get started action:

Use this simple meditation-style activity to connect with your senses. Start by just choosing one meal a week to flex your sensory awareness muscles and build up from there.

1. Sit down somewhere away from distractions with your meal or snack.
2. Take a couple of deep breaths to focus on your body.
3. Take some time to connect with each of your senses before you start eating.
4. What are you feeling? What are you seeing? What are you smelling? What are you hearing? What are you tasting?
5. Take a bite of food and check in again with each of the senses.
6. Continue to eat your meal or snack as you normally would. You don’t have to turn this into a mindful eating epic!
7. At the end of your meal or snack check in with your senses again.

Step 3: Be aware, but not attached to food thoughts

It’s really common for food rules and food beliefs to impact our food choices and how we feel about ourselves (and our bodies) around food. It’s easy to rattle off a few well-worn scripts that we run through before we eat. Unfortunately, most of these thoughts stops us connecting to our body around eating and instead encourage us to use outside cues and rules to tell us how to eat. We don’t want to outsource our relationship with food like this.

The other not so fun impact of thoughts around food are the guilt-based ones. The thoughts that we use to berate ourselves about what and how much we eat. These are the thoughts that lead to binging, emotional eating, food cravings and generally feeling pretty crap about ourselves. Luckily, mindfulness can help.

Get started action:

– When you notice thoughts and feelings coming up around food, picture them as a white fluffy cloud floating across your mind or you can think of them like a notification that pops up on your phone that you read then swipe away.

– If particular thoughts are a little ‘sticky’ and you need help to ‘let them go’ you can try some gentle questioning. Does this thought help you to connect to your body or does it actually disconnect you from your body?

Mindful eating, like any mindfulness strategy, is a practice. It’s not about being perfect but simply about connecting to your body, your food and the present moment. The aim is to build awareness and trust in your body again so that you can eat everything you enjoy and enjoy everything you eat.