Emotional Eating: What if Weight Loss Isn't about the Food? | Tricia Nelson | TEDxWestMonroe

I reached my spoon to the pint of praline pecan, it's the perfect last bite, gooey caramel swirling around creamy vanilla ice cream with two delicious maple pecans that will add just the right amount of crunch, but I can't enjoy this bite, see? Not only did I eat the entire container of ice cream, but I also devoured a bag full of popcorn, half a package of cookies, and 26 Hershey's kisses. I feel completely sick, disgusted, I sweep up the remains and throw them in the trash, vowing never to do it. I eat that kind of garbage again I collapse on the couch after a few hours the cookies in the trash call me Trisha and I respond in a trance I trip over the trash can I find the cookies and clean them once again my insatiable hunger drives me to new ones depths of shame

what

's wrong with me? why can't I stop?

I'm a loser at 20 I was 50 pounds over

weight

I hated my fat I had a roll of fat on my belly that crumpled in my hands and imagine cutting it like you cut fat from the side of a steak. Sometimes I wanted to contract a disease that would automatically make me lose

weight

without having to diet. I even considered joining the military so I would be forced to work out at boot camp I hated working out I yo-yo dieted up 30 down 20 up 10 and as a result I had several sizes of pants in my closet because I never knew

what

size my pants would be.

Skinny jeans were collecting a lot of dust While I spent years searching for the hidden solution to overcome my weight

loss

problems, I found that solution, I found that key and it wasn't through a magic diet; In fact, dozens of studies show that diets generally have a dismal success rate in recent years. A study published in the British Medical Journal followed 22,000 adults following one of 14 popular diets and found that within a year the participants regained all the weight they had lost. However, if you search Amazon right now for diet books, you will get approximately 50,000. Results This was my experience no matter what diet I tried, of course I would start off strong.

I'm doing it, I look good, I feel good, the pants loosened, but then after a couple of weeks things started to get difficult, I mean, very difficult and at some point. the tension in my gut would become so unbearable that I would just break down and binge eat and always gain the weight back and then some, so the million dollar question is why it became so difficult. My experience is that when I dieted all the feelings I had filled with over

eating

came to the surface and I didn't have the tools I needed to deal with them.

That's what kept me stuck in a cycle of self-sabotage. Eating was the way I faced life if I wanted to. To lose weight and keep it off I had to develop healthier ways to cope. This changed everything for me when I adopted healthy ways of dealing with my emotions and stress, my weight stabilized and my relationship with

food

became much more peaceful. I'm excited to share three of these key ways with you, the first key was a shift in my perspective instead of focusing on what unhealthy

food

s were doing to me, I started to address what they were doing to me pep is an acronym p-e-p the first p stands for painkiller my painkiller Walnut ice cream and praline of choice, of course, so after indulging in any form of sugar, fat and starch, my three favorite food groups, I felt nothing.

I was unconsciously using food to anesthetize uncomfortable emotions, but my diet ultimately caused me more pain. escape because when life got too intense, whether it was family stress, financial fear, or just general feelings of anxiety that built up with my favorite meals in front of the TV, I was always taken somewhere far away at least momentarily and third p in pep punishment that seems counterintuitive, I know because delicious foods seemed to be a reward, but it barely rewarded me when I overate and ended up feeling bad, but I did this over and over again. You see, not only did I overeat but I also felt guilty about everything and I was also very hard on myself when I made a mistake, so when the cookies start calling to me, I wonder what's really going on.

Am I trying to numb painful emotions? Am I looking to escape? about something that is overwhelming or maybe I am trying to punish myself for something I said or did that makes me feel bad. This is an easy way to start making the connection between my

eating

and my emotions. The second key to finding balance is to reduce stress. So, in my experience, both personally and professionally, overeaters tend to be overeaters. He was always on the go, always putting the needs of others first, never slowing down long enough to catch his breath or eat a healthy meal.

Stress plays a role in elevated cortisol levels and increases cortisol. appetite and causes our bodies to store fat instead of burning it, so for me an important and crucial piece of the weight

loss

puzzle was self-care. When I started integrating self-care practices into my life, I was more

emotional

ly balanced and had more energy and no longer craved coffee and chocolate for stamina, so some of the traits that work best for me that I do every day are meditation and journaling, but you may be thinking: Hey lady, I don't have time to take care of myself. a busy professional with a job, three kids, and a neurotic dog, think again when we take time for ourselves, we actually increase our ability to give to others and are also better equipped to handle life's challenges without resorting to food, so it is another key element of oneself. -The care was to change ingrained habits that caused my stress, so in my work I have observed several traits of

emotional

eaters that tend to be the most common and I refer to these traits as the anatomy of the emotional eater, the Achilles heel for most, including myself.

I was a people pleaser so I lacked self esteem and I chased atta girls who made me feel valuable and as a people pleaser I said yes to everything, I will chair the committee for sure, happy to host the party and Of course, I will do your job. and mine and jerry's work no problem i don't know what your experience is but every time i really tried hard to try to please someone they were never as happy as i had planned so not only was i exhausted but I was also a little resentful and this was the perfect storm to justify another one.

I deserve it. Changing this habit by learning to say no when there is too much on my plate, so to speak, really helped me reduce my stress and my feelings of hunger, now the latter. It is key to overcoming my emotional eating. Super important to get support from a community of other emotional eaters. Research shows that group support increases weight loss results and it makes sense. I mean, the temptations to eat unhealthy foods are everywhere. I think about television commercials, supermarket checkout lines, and parties. so overindulging is a socially acceptable pastime that is difficult to control without support, plus I must tell you that there is nothing more comforting than connecting with those who truly know the shame and humiliation of behaviors like picking out binge eating from the trash, so You might be thinking, isn't it silly to need help with something so basic and seemingly easy to control?

It's what I put in my mouth not so quickly. The truth is that emotional eating is one of the hardest addictive habits to break. Because? Because we have to eat what we are faced with is really similar to getting a grumpy tiger out of the cage trying to get past the friendly kitten and then somehow getting him back in the cage without being mauled, it's not that easy at all. Unless you have the right kind of support. Sarah is a mom. wife and award-winning producer who is tired of her sugar dependency, it turns out she was numbing her feelings with more than just foods like Nicorax gum or a glass of wine at night and working too much.

Sarah often worked during breakfast and lunch and paid for it. With a late-night binge, she never gave herself time to simply relax. Sarah was on edge when she asked for help, so within weeks of learning new ways to process her emotions and address her feelings and stress, Sarah wasn't just out of her depth. all the stimulants that had kept her propped up, but she also felt much less anxious. As Sarah was returning home, her daughters noticed a difference and even asked how they could adopt these same practices for themselves. You can develop the same sense of peace.

Take the mood test and really ask yourself what happens when you find yourself making another trip to the kitchen, is it perhaps for a painkiller as an escape or are you feeling bad about something and is it a form of punishment? Then manage your stress by implementing self-care habits that can help you feel more centered and also watching for things like pleasing people who may be causing you the most stress and ultimately nourishing your soul through connection and community with other emotional eaters. that can help you stay accountable and stay on track with your goals, these simple steps, while they have nothing to do with food, can have a real impact on your food choices and your ability to reach the weight that works best for you. .

I leave you with this. I believe we can all enjoy a relationship with food and ourselves that is both peaceful and self-caring. Start by looking beyond food for answers. Thank you.