Those of you managed to or still managing emotional eating and dealt with/dealing with weight gain, How ? what worked, how long did it take, how to get a handle on the binge-guilt-fasting spiral ?

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1. After my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I kind of went on a spiral. Within the first two months of my last year of law school I had gotten married (and had to learn how to adjust to that), found out my dad had cancer, and had to start a pre-law job prosecuting in a courthouse in addition to doing 60 hours of school work/class a week. I was in si much emotional turmoil. My husband is amazing, but all of the school and my dad’s sickness wore on me. Food and fattening beverages became my biggest source of comfort. It became what I looked forward to most in a day. I put on 40 pounds in less than a year. Last year I realized I couldn’t keep eating like that forever. I felt completely out of touch with my soul and I felt so sick and tired all the time. I also missed being thin and liking my figure.

   I realized I had to reconnect with my heart and mind and stop drowning it in TV, drinks, and fatty food binge eating. I didn’t know how to just sit and BE with myself and my emotions. It was too painful. The brief periods I wasn’t cramming my face or didn’t have tv to distract me my mind would instantly turn to remembering the pain on my dad’s face and watching his body waste away.

   At the beginning of last year I made a commitment to stop distracting myself and running from my emotions with food, screen time, and drinks. I started slowly REPLACING the crappy habits with good ones instead of trying some big change all at once. Here’s some of the habits I did:

   1) mindful eating. I stopped eating while looking at a screen or being distracted. It’s suuuuper easy to binge eat when your sitting in front of the TV, you’ve got limitless snacks on hand, and all the time to sit and eat. When you eat mindfully, you can FEEL yourself get full and satiated. I feel far less hungry after eating mindfully and I consume far fewer calories.

   2) redirecting energy- I used food and drinks as a way to tamper my energy. Without stuffing my face my mind would just race and be all over the place. Now, I redirect all that frantic energy into exercise. I’m not into weight lifting or other crazy hard workouts. Instead I go on looooong walks. Walking and listening to music or podcasts a couple hours a day really helps me not feel so frantic and bottled up. I feel really mellow at the end of the day after walking a long time.

   3) learning to be present with myself no matter how much it sucked: when I really began facing my emotions instead of drowning them in food and drinks it was tough. For a few days all the pent up and ignored emotions over the past couple of years cascaded over me. I finally allowed myself to cry. I finally felt all that pain leaving. I still have some of that pain surprise me and I’ll just let myself cry now instead of grabbing a bag of chips and eating till I’m sick. I thought by allowing myself to feel it too long it’d be too painful. But I actually felt five times better and was finally able to come to a place of acceptance. I miss my dad but I’m glad he isn’t in pain anymore and I’m no longer angry that he is dead. That took a long time for me to be able to say.

   4) mindfulness and non-electronic hobbies – instead of mindlessly scrolling for hours now on social media I only allow myself to be on my phone a few hours a day now. I find myself wanting to do other healthier things now like walk or read a book for a few hours. It doesn’t seem like it should affect food intake but for me it does. Being on my Instagram account and constantly seeing food in my feed always had me thinking about food. Now that I’m meditating, reading, walking, I only think about food when it’s a meal time and I’m fine eating something healthy because I haven’t spent all day fantasizing about the hamburgers and French fries I saw in my phone or tv ads.

   Edit:
   5) managing guilt after binge eating: actively forgiving myself and picturing myself hug my inner self helps a lot. I realized bingeing is a symptom of the pain my heart has endured. Instead of beating up on myself I inwardly hold myself, consider the pain I wasn’t processing, allow myself to acknowledge it, then let it go, and face the next moment fresh and new. It’s been soooo many times I’ve had to do this, but it helped a lot. Meditation really helped me learn how to get in touch with my body and my emotions. It’s crazy the difference it makes. I use the Breathe app for meditation but the others are just as good- Calm, and Headspace.

   Overall I’ve lost about 30 pounds of pure fat since last year. It’s slow progress (because any HEALTHY fat loss takes time) but for once im not gaining it back like I used to once I’d lose a few pounds because I’d return to bingeing. I also finally feel like in reconnecting with myself and I feel so much healthier now too 🙂 hope that helps!

2. Healing my relationship with food. I’ve read a lot about intuitive eating and the idea that there are no “good” or “bad” foods, because that tended to be a big part of my emotional eating (“I’m sad, so I’m not going to be *good* I want to eat all these chips”). Taking away these moral values to food took away the childish rebellion in the back of my mind that used food as a “gotcha” to other people (that really only affected myself).

   Also working really hard to learn what my hunger cues actually feel like. So instead of just immediately going to “I’ll eat something,” I stop and take a moment to really analyze how my body feels, if it’s empty and kind of grumbling and my mood is off, or if I’m just angry/upset/depressed and looking for anything to self-soothe. If it’s the latter, I’ll take a moment to try to journal and really break down what’s causing that desire to try to work through it.

   I’m not doing any of this to lose weight, for me it’s just about unlearning all the toxic shit I was taught as a kid that has fully ruined my ability to do something as simple as eating without it being a massive headache. It’s been pretty good so far.

3. Don’t let triggering foods be in your home if you have control over it. Easier to avoid unhealthy habits that way- don’t have a fancy liquor shelf is you are an alcoholic.

4. Honestly I ended up becoming orthorexic instead, going “all in”, having a rule of no more than 800kcal/day and at least 30 000 steps (and at least 5000 had to be running rather than walking, losing 13 kilos in three weeks (when I wasn’t even overweight according to the BMI scale to start with) and basically just breaking down on the floor. After that “rock bottom” I ended up having a period of eating a healthy amount of food. But with reoccurring anorexic periods of time… Wouldn’t recommend my way.

   However, eating things that will make you full (slow fibers and high protein) but are healthy and don’t contain too much kcal can be good if you wanna lose weight and struggle with overeating. Eating fat is still important. Making your own hummus is a great tip as beans are high in fibers and protein, the olive oil will get you some healthy fats on top of that, and it’s really easy to make. Beets, carrots, fish, eggs (boiled are the best) and oats (use whole grain) are also great. And if you wanna snack on something – kiwis, berries, granny smith apples peaches and citrus fruits are great due to the high amounts of fibres and low sugar and popcorn are good. Don’t starve yourself. If you get yourself full of other things than sugar and fast food the cravings will decrease enormously.

5. I stopped buying the foods that I would binge. Unfortunately, I live with my parents and sometimes they would buy these snacks for me randomly & I had to tell them to stop. I also try to exercise or listen to music whenever I’m stressed out or sad.

6. For me I am still struggling if I am being honest, I’ll either lose too much weight or gain some back. I have always struggled with an eating disorder but on days I eat healthier or intermittent fast I feel much better overall vs the days I eat crap. Still trying to figure it out.