Eating My Emotions
I'd have to say that of all the Intuitive Eating guidelines, emotional eating is by far the most difficult for me. I've been pondering it a lot this week and frankly am not much closer to a conclusion than I was before. I've listened to a lot of podcasts, read various blog posts and books related to the subject recently and it just seems like they're making things worse for me. It really seems that when I decided to start eating intuitively, it was for drastic reasons that were a type of "bottom of the bucket" thing for me. I was literally at the end of my rope and I was probably going to binge myself into oblivion or I was going to change my life.
I look back at the way I was eating during my opposites of binging. It was much in the way I'd lived the past 10 years. Absolute humongous restriction in every way...rules, rules, rules. Restrictions upon restrictions upon restrictions. My literal head was done. I was absolutely unable to live with a single further restriction. It's not that my I had no will power. For ten years, I had will power beyond imagination. I feel like I sucked that well absolutely dry. I had nothing left to offer and I came to a point where any time my mind felt that it was being restricted.....I binged. Cause and affect. This is one huge self-esteem sucker, let me tell you. I came to a place where I felt completely miserable about myself (and still do in some respects) with my fortitude. Where is my stamina? Where is that rock I used to be? People used to comment all of the time how amazing my resilience was. I could turn anything down - and did so sometimes just to show how amazing I was haha.
Today I am working on conquering my emotional eating since that is what I believe is standing in the way of any type of weight loss. I feel amazing that I have gone through many of the steps of Intuitive Eating, alone. I have persevered through this and am in a very good place in my head. However, every time I start "working" on my emotional eating, my head says I'm restricting and I want to binge. I don't "binge" in the way that I used to but I"m certainly eating more than I was before I started "working" on it. It's a total Catch22 and I wish I knew what to do about it.
One place I've been looking at suggests I start meditating to get to my true feelings about the need I have to escape. I emotionally eat to escape, when I am tired (and feel I deserve this snack), when I want to stay up late and read (to escape). Yes, my life is hard and yet so is everyone else's. Why do I feel mine is so awful? I have a great life! However middle-age is difficult. So many people pulling me in all sorts of directions and I did choose these things but choosing and living might be two different things.
All I know now is that I had to back off from my aggressive quest into emotional eating. Otherwise, I'll end up back at square one. Perhaps I'm just moving through this aspect of it too fast.
