Are You An Emotional Eater? Here's How To FIND OUT

SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Underground Confidence with Shelly Treacher. Today I'm gonna continue with the revamp of my earliest podcast. Today I'm gonna talk about how to understand that the reason you can't stop eating has emotion behind it. But first I want to start to tackle something I hear people say a lot. People who are frustrated with themselves for not being able to stop eating often characterize themselves as lazy. This pains me when I hear it, because I hear the tone of voice that they use when they make this judgment. It's often utterly scathing and frustrated. So I want to start by explaining my take on laziness and comfort eating. First of all, I think it's vital to start to change this tone of voice from one of deep disdain for yourself to one of curiosity and compassion. This is something you'll hear me encourage you to do frequently. Have a check on what it would be like if you started asking, what is it that makes me want to be lazy? I'm putting lazy in inverted commas here. What is it that makes you want to sit on the sofa and eat? Rather than do anything else. Instead of I'm such a lazy cow, all I can do is eat. What the hell is wrong with me? Can you see the difference there? One encourages exploration, and so then possibly understanding, while the other is soon gonna lead to self-hatred and angry eating. This is very destructive. So I'm asking you to stop and to notice how you talk to yourself. It makes a huge difference. Laziness, as far as I understand, is something that we as humans have a natural propensity towards. All of us. We apparently want to conserve energy for anything but survival or pleasure. So just bear that in mind next time you call yourself lazy or assume that someone else is judging you to be that. That laziness is actually more often than not an avoidance of some kind. An avoidance of discomfort of some kind. Which brings us beautifully on to today's podcast. How can you start discovering what's emotional about your eating, or any state-altering habit, which could include anything from alcohol to scrolling to shopping or even serial dating? You've got to start asking what is the discomfort behind your comfort eating or comfort habits? It can be obvious. So for example, if someone criticizes you and you feel angry and you don't know what to do about it, you might find yourself eating the whole cake. But it can also be more subtle, such as in lockdown, when we were bored, we might have found ourselves going to the fridge all the time because we just really didn't have anything better to do. My experience is that boredom is a little bit deeper than just being bored. There's something more going on for many of us that hides a whole range of different feelings that are hard to admit or know what to do with. In lockdown, for example, most of us were traumatized. We had to endure massive changes, felt isolated or stuck in with the same people, and lost a great deal. It's been a hell of an adjustment, and it still is actually. So there are many different feelings that could be provoked that lie behind general overeating, or the eating many of us did in lockdown. And in this British stiff upper lip culture, we are not particularly good at knowing what to do with our feelings. So we're eating. My aim is to get you used to starting to think about what you're actually doing and why. Because this is the key to change. So here are some questions you can ask to help you to start to understand what's going on for you. When is it that you overeat? Is it late at night? When you finish work? Is it when you're alone? When you're bored, stressed, tired? Or is it when you visit a certain relative? When is it that you habitually binge or overeat? Spend some time thinking about this. Number two, think of a recent time when you ate more than you wanted to. What was happening just before? What were you actually thinking? How are you feeling? Were you thinking thoughts like this? I don't care. I don't like myself anyway. I'll be fat anyway. I might as well eat this now because I've got the food, I've got to finish it, then maybe tomorrow I won't buy anymore. I'll start the diet tomorrow. Or were you trying to treat yourself, give yourself some kind of reward for a difficult day? Did you have this thought? I deserve this. Or I'm happy, so I want to do what I like. Surely that is treating myself well. Or were you thinking, this will make me happy? Again, spend some time on these questions. Just work out bit by bit what was going on for you that you never noticed. Number three, what would actually happen if you didn't go to the fridge or snack cupboard all day? What kind of feelings would you be left with if you did this? The answer I usually get to this is that you would have an overwhelming, all-pervasive, maybe even raging desire to eat. This is the most common thing that I hear, so you're not alone if this is how you feel. But what I want you to start asking yourself is, so what? What's the worst thing that could actually happen? This is where you really start to understand that it's discomfort that causes you to eat. Having answered these questions, can you see that it's possible that your eating might be in response to some emotion? So, what I'm asking you to do is to start understanding what your discomfort is, how far back it goes, and then to find other ways to manage that discomfort. That's what this podcast is all about. I'm now going to give you a summary of what I've talked about today. First of all, I talked about how calling yourself lazy is unhelpful self-criticism. I then gave you three ways to start identifying the emotion behind your comfort eating. Firstly, by asking when it is that you comfort eat, then by asking what you were feeling and thinking before you overeat, and lastly, I asked you what you would be left with if you didn't comfort eat. To be able to stop overeating, you need to understand what's going on for you. You need to find a place of compassion for that. A place of self-hatred is a very poor place to give up comfort eating. Frankly, it's not going to happen from there. But from a place of genuine self-respect and with education on how to manage feelings differently, it is possible to choose not to overeat. That's what I'll be talking about more in the episodes to come. Thank you so much for listening. For more help, or if you want to go further with this, check out my latest programs. I'd also really love to hear any questions or comments that you may have.