We all know the first day of a diet is significantly easier than the second day... or the third... or the fourth, etc. That's why diets don't work in the first place! Well I can now tell you with 100% certainty that it's exactly the same with this whole "love thyself" experiment, too. With today came all the anxiety about not dieting, not counting calories in, not tracking calories burnt, but with none of the excitement about my new journey. And let me tell you, it was not easy to keep that anxiety at bay.
However, I've made it through the day, sanity intact! One of the things that came up for me today that I'd like to talk about for a moment is emotional eating. One of the principles of the whole no-diet movement is to eat in response to your body, and nothing else. Even your emotions. That's a new one for me. I'm used to using food as therapy, something I've been doing my entire life. So when some pretty raw emotions boiled up to the surface today, my instinct was to grab some chocolate and send them back to the depths. Instead of doing that, though, I just sat with that hunger for a moment and acknowledged consciously to myself that I was not in fact hungry but upset, and that there was a much more rational and healthy way to deal with my feelings than, well, swallowing them.
This was a really important moment for me, because one of the major reasons I've kept myself on diet after diet all of these years is that I know I have a tendency to binge eat whenever unpleasant emotions arise, and I also know that if I'm going to make this challenge successful, I'm going to have to figure out how to deal with my emotions in some other, more constructive way, and I know this is true for most of you guys too! So whether it's petting your dog, taking a walk, or even simply tuning into your own breath for a moment, try to at least acknowledge to yourself that your desire to eat is motivated by something other than hunger. If you keep coming back to this fact and trying to figure out what motivated the urge to snack/eat/binge, eventually you'll begin to address what you really need to deal with instead of masking it with food, or even worse, masking it with that body hatred you've been holding onto for so long.
I think an important point to make while addressing emotional eating, though, is that if you find yourself emotional eating, do NOT (and I really genuinely mean this) beat yourself up for it! Accepting your body means accepting your bad habits, your coping methods, and everything else that comes along with them! Berating yourself for emotional eating is JUST as bad as beating yourself up for not having stuck to your diet, or for not losing those 5 pounds you've been working on, or whatever your physical vice is!
With every war comes a bunch of smaller battles, and you know what? You're not going to win all of them. Sometimes you're going to make the choice to binge eat or emotional eat or just eat when you aren't really hungry because it looks delicious! And here's the important part to keep in mind: there is absolutely nothing wrong with that!! The relationship you've developed with your body and the food you put in it took years to develop, and learning how to restructure your relationship with food is going to take a little while too! The most important thing here is that you just keep on trying to be conscious of what you're feeling and how that's influencing the choices you make, and you'll be on the road to success! #
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