3 Thoughts to Overcome Emotional Eating

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Related Episodes:

• Thought Habits and Your Results
• Emotional Eating: Is It Even a Problem?
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Full Episode Transcript:

3 Thoughts to Overcome Emotional Eating

Hey there, welcome to the podcast. If you’ve been a listener for a while or if you just recently started listening, you have probably caught on by now that I am not just about helping you with the actions when it comes to eating habits and weight loss. But also, the thoughts that you have, which greatly impact your results.

So today I want to give you some thoughts to overcome emotional eating. I will explain how exactly these thoughts will create better results for you regarding getting control of your emotional eating.

Before I completely dive in though, I have a fun new thing to announce that will benefit you greatly, and that is free written coaching,

This is an opportunity that I’m opening up just a couple of times a month and it’s only for those who are on my e-mail list. So, you’re gonna want to get on my e-mail list by either signing up for the weekly tips on my website or signing up for the free class on my website.

You can also find the links for these on the episode page and I’ll also put a link in the episode description if you’re listening to this episode from a podcast app and not on my website.

(If you’re reading the transcript, you can get on my email list for the weekly tips here: https://kate-johnston-coaching.myflodesk.com/weekly-tips Or, you can get on my email list by grabbing the free class plus worksheets here:

So, a couple of times a month, I will be opening the written coaching (you’ll get an invitation via email) for you to submit something that you need help with or coaching on regarding eating habits, weight loss, mindset, even things like body image, confidence, motivation.

All the things that are related to eating habits, weight loss and your mindset around these things. And certainly eating habits includes all the things like emotional eating, cravings, overeating, mindless snacking.

What you submit will be completely confidential of course, and I will respond back with some written coaching for you to help you. The thing is, I don’t know how many people I will get submitting things, and there is only one of me, so I’m limiting it to the first five people to submit the thing that they want coaching on.

If you’re one of the first five, then you’ll receive an e-mail within a couple of business days letting you know that your question was answered and giving you a link to click on to get your written coaching response from me on a secure and confidential page.

What I recommend, is before you hit the submit button with your thing that you need help with or coaching on, copy and paste it and put it somewhere else on your phone or on your computer in a Word document, etcetera just in case you weren’t one of the first five.

That way, the next time I open up the written coaching invitation, you can just copy and paste and get yours in super quickly.

That all being said, I do recommend that you be as detailed as possible so that I can best help you. I know you want to get your submission in quickly, however you will get the best coaching if you’re specific.

And like I said, even if you’re not one of the five for that time, just copy and paste and you’ll likely to be one of the five for the next time I open it up. So fun. So, make sure that you are on my e-mail list if you aren’t already, by signing up for the weekly tips or the free class.

Alright, so let’s jump in to 3 thoughts to overcome emotional eating.

Why do we care about thoughts in the first place?

Thoughts have such an impact on your results because thoughts affect how you feel and how you feel then affects the actions or the inactions you take, and of course the actions or inactions you take always produce a result, right?

Therefore, your thoughts will always trickle down to your results.

We want to try to optimize your thoughts to best serve you. Not that you have to be thinking positively, feeling positively, doing positively all the time period of course not. You’re a human being.

But, when you’re looking for a certain result that you desire or that will be good for your health, well-being, or future, you’re going to want to try to increase the likelihood that you get that result.

You can increase the likelihood that you’ll get this result, if you are thinking, feeling, and behaving like the person who gets that result. Much more so than if you are not thinking, not feeling, and not behaving in a way that will help you get the result. And by behaving, I mean doing actions, reacting, or not taking action.

So let’s just do a really general example. If you find yourself in the act of emotional eating, and then have a thought that makes you feel badly about it, this can increase the likelihood that you continue to emotionally eat.

You continue to eat the cookies or the rest of the bag of chips, just resulting in more emotional eating. And then more pain from that, because you feel like you’re just digging yourself a deeper and deeper hole.

Whereas if you find yourself in the act of emotional eating and have a thought about that, which produces a more neutral feeling, your actions thereafter will be different.

By a more neutral feeling I just mean something that’s not strongly negative or strongly positive. Because certainly, most people that find themselves emotionally eating and this is something they want to stop, are not going to feel happy that they were just emotionally eating.

So, we really have to be realistic here and aim for something that’s a little bit more neutral. Not a feeling that’s making you feel terrible. But not trying to fake a feeling of happiness either. This is just unrealistic.

We can certainly move towards more positivity, but first we need to just get out of that real negativity that isn’t serving you. And to do that, we just have to get to a little bit more of a better feeling emotion. A feeling or emotion that’s a little bit more neutral, rather than a super negative one.

I want to give you another general example. Just to make sure that you understand this concept of how a thought will impact your results.

Because most of my listeners are career women, let’s do a good one for career women.

Imagine that you messed up on a project for work. You could either think a thought like “I’m so bad at this,” “I’m such an idiot,” “I should find a new job.”

How do you think any of those thoughts would make you feel? Probably pretty lousy.

Let’s just choose one feeling or emotion that thoughts like this would probably cause. Maybe incompetent. Let’s say you feel incompetent when you think any of these thoughts.

When you feel incompetent, what are typically the next actions that you might take, or inactions? Maybe sit there and self pity. Maybe start looking at other jobs. Maybe even keep talking negatively to yourself. Maybe even look for other ways that you are incompetent in other areas just to beat yourself up more. And that’s just because your brain likes to sometimes try to prove thoughts true by looking for more evidence. Brains are so odd like that.

It’s also possible that you try to learn from your mistakes even when feeling incompetent. So, you can still take some “good” actions from incompetence. But what if you had a different thought, that produced a better feeling emotion and took action to learn from your mistakes from that emotion instead? And what other actions might result from that better feeling emotion?

Let’s explore. Imagine that you messed up on a project for work again. And instead, you had a thought like, “Okay, well at least I know where I can improve, so next time, I’ll do a much better job.”

What kind of feeling do you think would occur from a thought like this? You might feel motivated to look into how you can improve and start making those improvements. You probably won’t be sitting in a funk feeling terrible about yourself, at least not any more than a hot second.

You won’t be sitting there wasting time and sitting in self-pity. You’ll be much more likely to have growth from the experience, so that next time you produce the results that you really want to produce. The next chance you get to do a great job, you do. And you may not be perfect, but you do better than before. And that’s what counts.

Now, let’s bring it back to emotional eating. I’m going to give you some thoughts to help you overcome emotional eating, but first I want to tell you how you can use them.

You can either use them if you find yourself in the act of emotional eating, right after you’ve realized that you were just emotionally eating, or even ahead of time, to help decrease the negative thoughts feelings and actions that occur after a future episode of emotional eating.

Basically, any of these thoughts are really good to have on hand to use when needed. Either in the act, after, or ahead of time.

Thought #1 to Overcome Emotional Eating:

“I emotionally ate, now what?”

This is a really simple one to have and what it does is centers you in on what your next steps are going to be. Showing you that you have the choice and that even if you didn’t feel like you were in control of the emotional eating, you now have control of the next step.

You have control of what you’re going to think, feel, and do or not do.

Also, this thought starts out with eye emotionally ate, which really is just very neutral. It’s not putting a judgment on it, it’s just stating the fact. This is really key, because as soon as you put a judgment on something or label it as bad, that’s when it starts to spiral into feeling badly.

That thought “I emotionally ate, now what?” is not a negatively charged thought, but one that’s just a little bit more neutral, a little bit more matter of fact and let’s control the next step.

This is going to leave you feeling so much better than if you have a negative thought about emotional eating and start beating yourself up and then feeling badly. It’s going to leave you feeling in control of the next step or steps. It’s going to leave you feeling more powerful rather than powerless or at the mercy of the emotional eating.

Thought #2 to Overcome Emotional Eating:

“I’m someone who is working towards no longer emotionally eating.”

Emotional eating is just an eating behavior that can become a habit, or it might be an eating behavior that’s not an actual habit yet, but it’s not your identity. With this thought, you’re separating yourself from the eating behavior and you’re also giving yourself some grace and encouragement.

Think of it like you telling yourself that you are in the process of breaking that eating habit. Because even if you feel like you’re not doing a great job of breaking an emotional eating habit, you’re still at least actively working on it right? You’re still making some progress.

If you’re listening to this podcast, that means you’re doing at least some of the steps to move yourself closer to this goal of getting control of this eating habit. So when you have the thought, “I’m someone who is working toward no longer emotionally eating,” what emotion do you think that would create in you? Just think about that for a minute and try to put a label on the emotion.

Thought #3 to Overcome Emotional Eating:

“I will have a plan in place if I emotionally eat again.”

I love this thought. Well, I love all of them, but this one really would make me feel like next time I’ve got this.

It has this vibe of “I’m planning ahead, so no matter what happens, I will have a plan that I’ve decided ahead of time that’s going to serve me.”

This thought can leave you feeling secure, confident, in control. These are all such great feelings. And if you have a plan in place, you’re gonna have a better outcome most likely. And typically when you plan something ahead of time, you’re more likely to follow through on it, rather than if it’s just something in the moment.

If you are just completely lost on this, and need my help, I can help you with coaching. If you feel like you can’t do this stuff on your own and want to gradually learn how to be able to do it on your own, that’s my bread and butter.

That’s what coaching is for. To help you get the results that you want, but also help you keep those results. Enable you to be able to maintain without me. So, it’s a permanent result.

That’s why coaching is an investment in your future. Because it creates permanent results. We create results together and I teach you how to keep those results going, by coaching you on your thoughts, feelings, and actions that create those permanent results.

Those healthier lifestyle changes. Those healthier habits. So that you’re not continuing to spend time on the thing you’re struggling with now. We work together for a period of time, so that you then don’t have to waste any more time for the rest of your life on this thing that is a pain point for you.

If you want to talk about permanent change for you, whether your goal is to break one specific eating habit, several eating habits, or lose weight, I can help. We can talk about it if you book a free consultation with me.

I’ll ask you a whole bunch of questions, so I can learn more about you, give you a clear idea of how exactly I’d help you specifically based on what you tell me, and then you get to decide. Simple. Just the free consult will leave you feeling a lot lighter and more clear about your situation and what specifically will get you from where you are now to where you want to be.

To book your free consultation, visit https://katemjohnston.com/consult or if you’re listening to this episode from my website, you can easily find it on the episode page.

And a reminder, if you’re on my email list, be on the lookout for the invitations for free written coaching.  

Take care, thanks for listening and I’ll talk with you soon.