Binge eating on food when feeling sad or disappointed seems to be an obvious thing to do to comfort ourselves and yet, it makes it only worse.

“Don’t forget you’re human. It’s okay to have a meltdown, just don’t unpack and live there. Cry it out and then refocus on where you are headed.” – Unknown (found on Tiny Buddha)

We all do it! We all eat emotionally or even binge eat from time to time. And it is ok. But when it starts affecting our life, mental and physical health – then it might be time to look into this issue deeper.

We tend to judge emotions and feelings and describe them as bad or good. We all want happiness and don’t want to feel sad or angry.

Anger seems to be the bad guy when it comes to feelings. As children we get told not to be angry, we get told off for crying and get send to our room to sort ourselves out.

“Come back, when you are normal again.”

Emotions are part of us. This is what makes us human. But we often grow up without having learned how to feel emotions and how to manage them. We get a lolly or an ice cream when we are sad and learn that food makes us feel good and it is an easy way to get that “happy” feeling.

So, now we are older, we use the same coping mechanism we learned as a child.

Eating when an emotion comes up and we don’t know how to manage it. So, it is “easer” to suppress or to numb it.

Different people use different tools – it can be food, excessive TV, gambling, alcohol, drugs, pornography, sex or social media and phone addiction these days.

But to keep things easier – I will keep referring to food.

However, it doesn’t matter what we choose, it all comes down to increasing dopamine when we feel low and numbing emotions that we don’t want to feel.

In the moment we are overwhelmed with an emotion or a feeling, our body goes into a fight and flight mode. Cortisol levels and adrenalin goes up and all rational thinking gets shut down. It is a reaction that is necessary for survival and we needed when we were running away from the tiger. And it is still working in the same way these days.

So, when we feel angry, frustrated, sad, disappointed and feel overwhelmed with this feeling, we go to the old coping mechanism that we have used to deal with it – binge eating. Food – lots of food. It is almost like a tunnel vision. Everything becomes blurry and you are like on an autopilot.  It goes down the throat without even tasking it or noticing it. Most of the time until nothing is left and your body has come down from the adrenalin rush.

And all you can think of – what have I done. Not again.

A binge is followed by more emotions and feelings – this time it is guilt, shame, a sense of failure and even fear. Fear that we don’t have it under control, that it takes over us and is controlling our life. Fear that it will never stop.

This shows very clearly that eating our emotions and using food for comfort is not going to make them go away. It makes it all worse. It is time to address the actual reason.

It can be very scary. I have been there and know how it feels. You can read my story HERE and also how I overcame binge eating. You might have been doing it for so long, that it is all you know and you don’t even know how your life would look like without binging.

Let me ask you this:
If you choose fear and stay where you are right now
What is it costing you now to stay where you are?
What is your life going to look like if you keep doing what you are doing?

If your future doesn’t look like you want it to be if you keep going the way you are now, then it is time to make the changes.

We need to stop avoiding our feelings and emotions and learn to manage them. We need stop judging them as bad and good and see it as part of our life, as part of who we are – HUMANS. We need to look at the underlying pain and what your body, mind, soul and heart are looking for. It is your body’s way to talk to you.

My tip to get started is, take a piece of paper and a pen and write down some notes to the following questions – What you are afraid of feeling.
What are you scared off?

Write down as much as you can. This will give you an insight into what you are trying to avoid or numb.

In the next two videos I am going to give you the exact tools how to manage emotions and stress without using food as a drug. Sign up to my YouTube channel HERE and get notified when the next video comes out.

To overcome binge eating and emotional eating we need to address the core issue of this problem. It is not a food problem, believe me. It goes much deeper than that!

In this FREE e-book 6 steps to overcome emotional eating and binge eating I am sharing with you the core areas that might be triggering your binge eating episodes.

I want to tell you this – you are not alone. Way too many people suffer and they suffer in silence.

I want to make an end to it and have created a 6 weeks group course: Unrestricted and Free – End Binge Eating and Emotional Eating.

If you have struggled with weight, body image, confidence and an unhealthy relationship with food and yourself for far too long then this course is for you.