At what point in your life did food become a stress reliever, an ever-present companion, or used to fill the gap of a significant loss? If you relate to even one of these possibilities, its clear that emotional eating is a daily pattern. Everyone needs to feel safe and secure, loved, and appreciated, and most importantly, relevant to those around them. Yet, research shows that 75 percent of the U.S. population are emotional eaters.
When Did Food Become Your Stress Reliever?
Take Sarah, who’s an accomplished entrepreneur, chronic dieter, and an emotional eater. She’s suffered through cancer and other debilitating health conditions. Over the years, her weight continued to climb. The weight gain took a backseat to business issues and family relationships; Sarah managed the stress, frustrations, and anger by eating emotionally. Once she realized the excess weight was now part of her health issues, the thought of going on another diet was too overwhelming.
Sarah’s feeling overwhelmed, stuck in an overweight body, and realizing she couldn’t face going on another diet was the good news. “Hitting rock bottom” is often the best motivating factor in seeking an alternative to weight loss and chronic dieting. In Sarah’s case, dieting had never really worked; she’d gained and lost the same 20 to 30 pounds several times in her life. She was ready for a more holistic way to drop the excess pounds.
Today, people are seeking more holistic ways to lose weight. After years of emotional eating, dieting, and losing the same pounds again and again, an awakening or leveling-up approach to understanding that emotional eating is taking place. Many frustrated emotional eaters are seeing that food doesn’t fix their problems. National diet programs may offer group mindset coaching, yet, the root of emotional eating is rarely, if at all, discovered. It’s highly unlikely that they reach a deeper level of exploring that food is not a fixative; it is fuel for the body.
The foundation of Soul Centered Eating, a holistic approach to weight loss, is the physical is mental. A holistic well-being weight loss program is a lifestyle plan which incorporates all aspects of your life to improve every aspect of your life. Why? Because there’s more to losing weight than dieting, counting points, calories, carbs, and steps, or excess exercise.
First Step
Move you beyond the diet mindset; then there’s the necessity to explore what triggers emotional eating. This process introduces the practice of self-inquiry in order to discover ways that over the years you have body-shamed yourself or sabotaged your desire to lose weight, in order to live in a body, you embrace. Therefore, we can see that once a pattern has dug a deep enough groove, it takes self-inquiry to shift the pattern. It’s like being stuck in a gravity force that keeps you sucked into a holding pattern. The continuous practice of self-inquiry will lift you out of the pattern’s pull.
Second Step
The is self-awareness, which goes beyond trying to listen to the body or the practice of intuitive eating. Self-awareness points you in the direction of being comfortable with yourself and the vehicle that carries you through life. Soul Centered Eating encourages everyone to take care of the vehicle that carries their soul. When we embrace the body, we honor it much like we respect our car. In the context of the emotional eater’s daily life, there’s a lack of awareness when it comes to “topping off the tank.” Emotional eaters eat when they’re not hungry; their tank is already full. Yet, when it comes to filling the car’s gas tank, we know not to top it off. How is that we pay more attention to the car’s need than we do to our body?
Self-awareness demands paying attention to the inner-workings of our “vehicle,” what the emotions are “under the hood” and buried deep in our soul. If an emotional eater practices self-awareness, then the practice of observing desires, fears, stresses, and moments of resistance in their everyday experiences takes precedence. This practice has four benefits:
- It leads you beyond the diet mindset.
- It leads to understand ways your personal growth and weight loss may affect those around you.
- It’s raising your level of seeing the ways food will never fix your problems or relieve stress.
- It’s guiding you through a self-transformational process.
Soul Centered Eating and living offers new ways of valuing the vehicle that carries your soul.
- You’ll find your center, so impulses and stresses no longer pull you to use food as a fixative.
- You can eat a previously tempting foods and no longer be taken over by them; food is no longer an enemy.
- The shame or guilt previously associated with overeating is not an issue.
- You’ll meet your soul centered self.
What does it mean to meet your soul centered self? Let’s revisit Sarah! She reached her desired weight, her business is thriving, and she’s more confident about attending family gatherings. Today, she understands the issue is never food; it’s not a fixative for her emotions, stresses, or relationships. She lives from a soul centered sacred space, less weighed down by fear, resistance, or seeking outside herself to find comfort in food. Why?
Soul Centered Eating’s holistic approach to weight loss offers up this insight: The problem is never where or what it seems to be. Soul Centered Eating is a safe space, a holistic space, that is passionate about your self-transformation, weight loss, and living as the vibrant person you’ve longed to be and living in a body you love. It transforms your body and ignites your soul!
