What to do after an emotional eating session?
I just wanted to touch upon this topic because as we know what we do before emotional eating is important but it’s equally important if you overeat emotionally what to do after. What you do after, dictates whether or not the overeating will continue or not.
The way you REACT to emotional eating can be an opportunity to break this pattern.
Here are some tips on what you can do after an emotional eating session has occurred:
1. Don’t restrict or compensate!
The idea that you will eat super low calorie foods the next day, fast or restrict yourself will not help you. The problem with this kind of thinking is multi levelled: first of all you feel you did something “wrong” and that you “ate bad foods” so you need to punish yourself for it. This is not a good relationship with food. Second, deprivation will possibly lead to another binge, even a mental restriction. By restricting your food intake you are increasing the chances of overeating and feeling even worse about yourself. Try instead to have normal portion meals, focus on nutrition, drink plenty of water and reset your body the natural way.
2. What happened?
When we eat due to emotional reasons, it’s easy to just say:” I have no motivation, I am lazy and I have no willpower”. That’s actually not true. You are not lazy, you are motivated and you have willpower BUT you can’t have these things all the time-that is impossible, yes. You can’t be motivated all the time. That is why you need to rely on something else other that motivation to keep your eating habits “clean”. If you have had an emotional eating session ask yourself: What am I feeling? What happened that made me overeat? What was I compensating with food, what emotion?What do you need to tell yourself if you end up in the same situation?
3. Accept and own it
You can’t change the past and what you have done, don’t beat yourself for it. Beating yourself up never works and it will never work. Accept what happened, own it. The reason why this is hard to do is because we feel that if we accept something, that we won’t change. That’s not true. We change the moment we accept things. Accept the signals your body is giving you when it’s full, don’t try to run away from them. Your body may be telling you: “You were dieting too hard”, “You were restricting or overexercising too much”, “I need a break and I need food!”. It’s easy to dismiss these signs and start a new diet the next day, but if you pay attention when the overeating happens you will find very clear triggers that you can manage better in the future.
If you want to learn how to identify, manage your triggers and your emotional eating, book your FREE session HERE