Intuitive Eating: Feel Your Feelings
Learning intuitive eating is a journey, and takes practice. To help you out, we’re going to go through the principles of IE one by one. If this is the first blog you’re reading, pause here and go back to our earlier blogs in the series.
It can be helpful to get outside and get moving when you’re working through some difficult feelings. Take slow, deep breaths, laugh with someone you love, and focus on the things around you.
More often than not, when we tell people about Āhei, the response is an emphatic “Oh, I NEED that. I am such an emotional eater.”
Emotional eating has a bad reputation, and is something that people judge themselves pretty heavily for, believing it to be an issue of self control, or even a character flaw. However, we don’t think it’s all bad! That desperate urge to eat can be a really useful and effective indicator that something is off for you. Isabel Foxen Duke refers to emotional eating as an ‘internal alarm bell’, which alerts you to the fact that your needs haven’t been met, and that something in your life needs your attention.
While there’s nothing inherently wrong about having a slice of cake when you’re feeling rocky, it is important to do so mindfully, and it’s equally important to be able to honour our feelings and cope in other ways too, so that you’re not relying solely on food. We recommend coming up with a list of coping strategies that address your physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs, so that you are able to actively manage discomfort and distress instead of pushing it away and ‘tuning it out’, whether that be with food, Instagram, or even drugs and alcohol.
The simple truth of it is, sitting with difficult feelings can be uncomfortable, especially when emotional vulnerability is not necessarily encouraged in our world. However, it’s important to do, as the feelings themselves will not cause as much pain as you will create by trying tirelessly to avoid and silence them. That is to say, the more you try to distract yourself and ‘tune out’, the more emotional pain you’ll find yourself in. It’s the ultimate paradox, but it’s true: the only real way to let difficult feelings go is by letting them in in the first place, and the only way to stop emotional eating is, ironically, responding to this internal alarm bell with compassion (and not making late-night ice cream totally off-limits). So, next time you are feeling a little bit off and heading for the fridge, pause and ask yourself the following questions:
“Am I actually hungry?
This is always the first step - checking in with yourself to see if you are biologically hungry. If you are, then honour your hunger and eat mindfully! If you’re not, then it can be helpful to keep digging deep, questioning, and checking in with your feelings.
“What am I feeling?”
Have you ever heard the phrase ‘name it to tame it’? It’s a catchy way of remembering that understanding and noticing what we are feeling is an important first step in working through it. It can be helpful to sit (stand, lie down, whatever) and focus your attention on your body. Notice the sensations that are happening in your body by slowly scanning from the tips of your toes all the way up to the top of your head, paying close attention to any sensations you notice.
You can ask yourself questions like:
What feelings and sensations do I notice in my body?
What does this feel like?
Are these physical or emotional feelings, and what might have caused them? (For example, you may notice that you have sore arms from working out yesterday AND that you are holding some tension in your shoulders from feeling a little bit anxious.)
“What do I need?”
The third and final step in this process is figuring out how to meet your needs. A couple of weeks ago, after a particularly tough day, a friend asked me a simple question: “What do you need right now to make this easier for you?”. She encouraged me to think of the things that would resolve and comfort the hard feelings I was experiencing, and together, we made some small steps that didn’t include me diving head-first into an entire tub of Ben & Jerry’s, or using Instagram to distract me from my emotions. We did some yoga, talked it out, and cooked a delicious meal together, and by the end of the evening, I felt so much better. While it can be so helpful to have wonderful loved ones who will walk alongside you, it’s also really important to be able to ask this question of yourself too. You may find it helpful to write a list of activities that help you feel better and brighter, and you can refer back to this when you are feeling a little low.
Like anything else, this process takes practice, so remember to show yourself some kindness and compassion as you learn it!
This blog is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or dietetic advice, and is for informational and educational purposes only. If you or somebody you love is struggling, contact your GP, or call/text 1737 to speak to a licensed therapist.