episode 121: why you feel controlled by emotional eating
On Episode 121 of The Diet Diaries I’m diving into the myth of happiness and the connection to emotional eating.
Inspired by a quote I read on my beloved Cup of Jo blog by author Hugh McKay, I’m talking about the idea of wholeness and how that is a much more accurate way to describe what to want for ourselves as humans. If you’ve ever struggled with hard thoughts and feelings because you’re always feeling hungry even after eating and you constantly wonder why do I hate my body, this one is for you.
We’ve gotten to a place in our society where happiness has been put on a pedestal and the only feeling we want to experience…and so by default we’ve been taught to push away and feel bad about the harder emotions.
“Good vibes only” was seemingly everywhere on Instagram for a long time and I think it’s had a such a detrimental impact on our expectations and is a total misrepresentation of what the human experience truly is.
This episode is a great follow up to episode 119 where I talked through 4 key skills to help you navigate negative body image thoughts.
Here’s what you’ll hear in episode 121:
Why its normal and ok to not feel happy all of the time
Why chasing the goal of happiness is a big driver of emotional eating
Why food never actually makes us feel better
What we’re chasing when we use food to cope with feelings
Some of my favorite resources for learning more about emotions including Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown
How to use an emotion wheel to identify and cope with your emotions
A go to skill to help you shift your thoughts
How emotions actually coexist
If happiness isn’t the goal, then what is?
How emotional eating connects to fat loss
When we start to accept that having hard emotions is a normal part of being human then we begin to learn that we don’t have to fix that or escape it. And when we don’t have to fix it, we can redirect that energy to actions that are actually productive and helpful.
I’ll be doing an episode soon on some somatic tools for how to tolerate and move through the hard emotions and this will be a great companion to the tools from episode 119.