Changing My Relationship With Food
Overcoming emotional eating
I asked my doctor today for advice about losing weight. Big mistake. She launched into an explanation on only eating whole foods and eliminating all foods that aren’t healthy. When she criticized what I normally eat for breakfast (whole grain English muffin, peanut butter, and fruit), I realized that she approaches weight loss with an all-or-nothing attitude.
Yesterday, I talked to my therapist about emotional eating. She reminded me that an all-or-nothing approach never works psychologically and only sets me up for failure. My doctor and my therapist represent different paths. One path is a spring that leads to quick weight loss, but it will fail in the long term. The other path requires a slow walk.
For nine months, I did dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), a cognitive behavioral treatment. I found a Kindle version of a DBT workbook for emotional eating. It is free with a Kindle Unlimited membership. I did several of the exercises. One of them required writing down my desire to change. I wrote, “I am ready to change. I am ready for new ways to cope with my feelings.”
Another exercise includes writing down acceptance statements and declarations. I wrote the following:
I accept that I use food to cope with my emotions and brain issues (ADHD). I accept that emotional eating has caused weight gain and health issues.
I take responsibility for emotional eating.
I want to overcome emotional eating.
I am willing to do the work to learn and use new coping techniques.
I will do whatever it takes to overcome this ineffective habit.
The workbook also suggested doing five minutes of deep breathing. By the time I read that section, I had already practiced deep breathing while tapping for five minutes. I wrote in my journal after that combining tapping and deep breathing “works wonders,” and it does. The chat with the doctor marked the third trigger I experienced in two days. I am feeling big emotions now, but I am calm.
There are three states of mind in DBT: wise mind, reasonable mind, and emotion mind. Wise mind is a balance between reasonable mind and emotion mind. In emotion mind, we operate in “moods, feelings, and urges to do or say things…facts, reason, and logic are not important.” However, in reasonable mind, we operate by “facts, reason, logic, and pragmatics.” When I reach for junk food at night after dinner, a habit that began in childhood, I am in emotion mind. All logic goes offline while I munch on cookies or Doritos.
I felt despondent about my eating habits last night until I started reading the workbook and doing the exercises. I gave myself hope by doing so, and hope is the engine that keeps us driving down the path of trauma recovery. Slowly, I will change my relationship with food.