My Journey Discovering Emotional Eating
Why did I choose to focus on Emotional Eating?
Until the year of 2022 I was not fully aware of my unhealthy relationship I had with food I have been carrying with me for many, many years. Now thinking back I can see that everything started to reveal itself early on in my teens. Today everything seems so much clearer and making so much sense and I can connect the dots as to why I was handling certain emotionally stressful situation in a particular way. But back then I was unaware of what was going on within me, punishing and self-sabotaging myself because I did not understand what was happening with me and why I was doing what I was doing. I have been dealing with a lot of fear around rejection or not feeling good enough starting in the family environment all the way to school, friendships and relationships. I constantly had the feeling of not being smart and capable enough and was always trying to make sure that I was liked by people. I couldn't stand the thought of someone rejecting me and not wanting to be with me. Over the years without noticing I started to develop a daily habit of eating emotionally and seeking comfort food every time that I connected with a sense of loneliness and rejection. The need of belonging was so deeply ingrained in me that I would do almost anything to feel accepted by others, from people pleasing to ignoring my own needs which triggered a lot of stressors in me that I calmed down with the way I thought best to handle. The only way I knew how to do that back then, was to calm my arising emotions with food. It didn’t matter if it was a plate of spaghetti, bread with loads of butter and Nutella, cookies or chocolate. I started to become dependent on food, not only when I felt emotionally out of balance. Through the years little by little I could find some stability in all of it again, understanding that I was ignoring my own needs and not attending my emotions theprocessing and handling better when I lived through any kind of loss and go back to a more or less balanced relationship with food.
In 2020 when my whole life took a turn-around, leaving Switzerland and got stuck in Spain because of Covid instead of traveling the world, once again I was hit with an emotional Tsunami and following anxiety attacks because plans didn’t work out in my favor and I felt stuck regarding my future plans. While trying to control my emotions and anxiety the best I could, unconsciously I started again coping with it through controlling my diet. I slipped back in old habits and found myself in Binge Eating. For anyone who has never heard of it, here’s a short explanation so that you have an idea of what it is:
“A person who has a binge eating disorder has a feeling of being out of control when it comes to eating. Food is ingested very quickly in large amounts. Binge eating differs from bulimia in that a person with a binge eating disorder does not purge themselves—by using laxatives or vomiting— after eating, as a person with bulimia does. The affected person experiences stress or anxiety that is only alleviated by eating and feeling numb while binge eating. In addition to eating food in excess and to the point of discomfort, the condition is also characterized by feeling out of control when eating and a sense of shame or guilt over the behavior that is followed by punishment. There can be noticeable fluctuations in weight, both up and down.”
It was difficult time and I hated food just as much as I loved it. It was a true love-hate relationship. But because back then I didn’t understand how to approach my emotions and that the solution was explicitly found in addressing its origins and going to the roots that triggered my reactions and responses. For a long time I kept trying to control my emotions through controlling my food intake, amount and food choices, punishing myself when I didn’t meet up to my intentions and expectations. What was happening had nothing to do with food itself but with my incapacity to address my emotions properly, my mind was trying to come up with a first-aid strategy to safe the situation and feel good again. By digging deeper into my past and knowing that my anxiety, frustration, anger and desperation had its reasons - this was giving me valuable information about how to find healing and my way through it in all of this. Different courses, being coached, then in therapy in psychoanalysis while learning about and analyzing my subconscious mind and the decision to do Ayahuasca with great and professional guidance brought me to the origins of my symptoms which later on I realized was when I was triggered feeling rejected and deprived of love. In other words, I was using food to punish myself because I felt undeserving of a good, abundant and blissful life as I felt like I didn’t receive the love and attention I needed as a child. A big factor was also finding stability again and a place to be, wind down and feel safe in my life. Rooting myself again. I have been moving around a lot and went through many changes in place and life circumstances before I finally settled down in a fix place with my own apartment. Through all of these years of self-education, experimenting with different diets and fasts, expansion of consciousness and research, I discovered the tools for myself that today help me cope in a much healthier manner with my triggers and emotions so that I can make better choices for myself, my own health and my body in the future.
Nevertheless, I still experience days like this in the present moment when old triggered wounds want to lead me to calming myself down using food. The difference now is that usually I immediately can detect when something is coming up and where it might be coming from, what emotion is showing and how to react to it appropriately through observation and curiosity. I learned to let go of shame, guilt and judgment and connect with being more loving, curious, observative and understanding towards me and my triggers. Because now I know everything has its reason to be. Food today isn’t the first thing that I reach for as a coping mechanism which gave me a huge sense of relief and happiness when I started realizing that things were changing for me in a positive way. There are moments I allow myself to eat emotionally when I feel like there’s absolutely nothing that could help and that’s okay. Through expanding my awareness and letting go of rigidity, I started to enjoy life with food so much more and today eat what I want without deprivation or feeling bad afterwards.
I thank all the people, friends and fellow students from the WildFit course and IIN Health Coach study program who were there for me in this time and some of them shared courageously and vulnerably their own struggles and fears. You are my heroes. It made me realize that we all have something that we are struggling with in life and the most honoring thing one can do, is be there for each another, feeling mutually accepted and emotionally supported in their own healing journey to more peace, balance and well-being.
Through this experience I realized how many people nowadays are struggling with Food; Emotional Eating, Disordered Eating and Eating Disorders. There is still a good amount of people in the world who are not aware of the fact that it is a sign of some shortcoming in respect of certain unfulfilled and unattended personal needs and in direct connection to their unattended emotions. I made it a mission to be a guide for those who would like to understand better their emotions, want to find solutions to their own current struggles and what it has to do in direct relation with their relationship with food.
“Don’t give up just because you don’t see immediate results. Know that each positive choice is affecting you in hidden ways - and will add up to big change over time. ”
