Healing Overeating: Insights from ‘Eating Out Of Control’

Struggling with emotional overeating can be overwhelming, but understanding its underlying causes is the first step towards change.  In the book “Eating Out Of Control: 7 Steps to Understanding why you do it, so you can stop”  insights into emotional overeating and its psychological roots are explored, offering a roadmap to healing and self-discovery.

Understanding Emotional Overeating

Emotional Overeating can often stem from attempts to manage intense feelings like anger and frustration through food. The book suggests that these eating habits serve as an avoidance technique, helping to numb us from uncomfortable and distressing feelings. This cycle, while it does offer short-term soothing, doesn’t address our underlying issues, or our true unmet needs – and this will ensure we stay “hungry”.

Building Body Trust

One of the main challenges we face when dealing with our overeating is the erosion of trust in our bodies and trust in our Self as an individual person.  By eating to cover up our difficult feelings, we will miss an opportunity to build a sense of resilience within.  This lack of connection with our body can be detrimental in the long-term because we don’t get to experience our Self as a trust-worthy person who is capable of making our own decisions and then owning all of those decisions and feeling 100% okay about it.

The Importance of Caring for Ourselves

Self-compassion is a proven antidote to our experience of shame – and it’s also one of the most difficult things in life to apply to ourselves.  It asks us to explore our internal experiences of shame and to rearrange any unhelpful and limiting beliefs that no longer serve us.  By working on long-term self-acceptance, we can move past our short-term diet solutions and embrace a healthier and more positive view of ourselves.

Awareness as a Tool for Healing

Building more awareness into our day-to-day eating practices can be as simple as beginning with a 20 second pause before we begin eating anything to take in all the colours and flavours and textures of the food we are about to eat. This pause alone can lead to growing feelings of self-trust and more enjoyment of all our eating experiences, as well as helping to stimulate our digestive processes.

Conclusion

“Eating Out Of Control” provides a comprehensive look into the factors driving our emotional overeating, emphasizing a deeper understanding and healing on an emotional level.  By developing our Mind-Full Awareness practices, we can explore what’s going on inside in more depth and build skills that create lasting change. For more resources on overeating and understanding, go to www.supporttostopovereating.com.au