Are you an Emotional Eater? Most of us are.
You’re bored, you eat. You’re stressed, you eat. You’re lonely, you eat.
And most of the time you’re not even consciously aware that you’re doing it until you find yourself rummaging through the cupboards or refrigerator, desperately on the search.
By then, it’s too late. It’s as if there's a switch inside you that was turned on and will not stop until it’s eaten every morsel of food in sight.
And you can already feel the guilt and frustration creeping in.
“I’ve done it again”
“Why can’t I just stop!”
But here’s the thing. It’s difficult to break this habit when you’re using the wrong technique.
The problem is that most of us don’t know what the right technique even is.
3 Steps to Stop Emotional Eating
The truth is, you need to stop focusing on trying to change your behavior, and instead focus on where this bad habit starts: the mind. If you try to curb your emotional eating habit when your mind is still fully engaged in it, you are relying solely on willpower -and that'll only get you so far. You need to focus on the cause.
You see, this habit goes a little deeper than just wanting to snack on Oreos while watching The Wheel of Fortune. It’s locked deep inside your Subconscious Mind. This is the part of your mind responsible for the thoughts, emotions and actions that you have on autopilot.
The habit of emotional eating stems from your subconscious programs. Essentially, you've created a neurological pattern that is triggered when you feel stressed, bored, lonely, or whatever other emotion drives you to the snack cupboard.
The key to long lasting results is to break the neurological pattern that is fueling this bad habit. The reason it's felt so difficult to break bad eating habits in the past is because the neurological pattern still plays in your mind, and you're having to use willpower alone to stop the snacking. When you focus on changing your mind, changing your behavior becomes much easier.
Step 1: Tune into your emotional state
Instead of trying to resist that muffin when you’re stressed or that bag of chips when you’re bored, bring your attention to your emotional state in those moments.
How are you feeling? Perhaps when you really tune in, you notice you're feeling sad. Or maybe frustrated, bored, lonely, or overwhelmed.
If you're not used to tuning into your body, this might feel foreign at first. Try closing your eyes, and asking yourself, 'how do I feel right now?', then notice what comes up. You might be surprised that although you thought you felt fine, when you really tune in, you notice that you're actually feeling quite overwhelmed with many things running in the background of your mind.
This is valuable information when you are trying to break the emotional eating habit because it reveals the problem your subconscious is trying to solve with snacking.
Step 2: Find healthier ways to cope with that emotion
Once you've tuned into your body to acknowledge what kinds of feelings are triggering you're trips to the fridge, it's time to give yourself healthier alternatives.
Think about it like this: you have this problem, perhaps it's that you're stressed. Your subconscious is trying to solve that problem so that you no longer feel stressed. How is it solving it? Your favorite comfort foods, of course. Is this the way you WANT this problem to be solved? No, because it just creates a new problem, right? So help find new ways of solving the problem that your subconscious is currently solving with food.
Depending what the problem is (ie. boredom, stress, loneliness, etc.) there are a variety of healthy solutions you could do to solve it. Here's a few ideas:
Go for a walk
Call up a friend
Take 10 deep breaths
Try tapping on your feelings with EFT
Go do a "comfort activity" such as a hobby you enjoy
Change up your environment
Or best of all, ask yourself this very powerful question: What do I need right now? You might be surprised that you know exactly what you need.
By solving the core issue, your subconscious no longer needs to try to solve it with food. Sure, you might still like the idea of a snack, but that's why we wrap it up with step 3.
Step 3: Reprogram bad eating habits with hypnosis
Hypnosis takes you into an altered state where you are able to receive positive suggestions about breaking the emotional eating habit.
That means the work that you do while in hypnosis, while directly connected to your subconscious mind is like rewiring those old neurological patterns so that the bad habit of snacking can easily be changed. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
You can use hypnosis to change all kinds of old programming that you have about food, your body image, and eating healthy.
In a private hypnotherapy session, you can dig even deeper to release any shame or stress that your body is holding onto that is contributing to bad eating habits or negative body image.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool for healing and personal growth. The following is a short hypnosis designed specifically to rewire your bad eating habits.
Hypnosis for Emotional Eating
Never listen to a Hypnosis while driving or operating equipment.
To get started on creating a healthier relationship with food, and removing that unconscious urge to eat when you feel bored, stressed, or lonely, you can listen to this short Hypnosis recording that specifically targets Emotional Eating.
My recommendation is to listen to it daily for 2-3 weeks to experience the full benefits. When listening to Hypnosis, find a quiet comfortable stop, free of distractions.
The more often you listen to Hypnosis and practice getting into an altered state, the easier it will become and the more you will benefit! Want to learn more about hypnotherapy? Check out this article.
And if you'd like to dig deeper and permanently break your bad eating habits, you can book a private hypnotherapy session to work with me directly.
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