Girlfriend to Girlfriend: Let’s Talk About Emotional and Binge Eating
We all deal with emotional eating, in some degree. Now we’ve got the girlfriend advice to help!
When a haircut from a stylist school turned bad (very bad!), I had one thought: Taco Bell! I almost called my friend Ellen to share my ‘emotional eating’ experience. I wasn’t hungry. I was stressed, upset, and looking for comfort in a burrito supreme.
Emotional eating is just that: eating for reasons other than hunger, when our emotions control our eating behavior. And, as women, I dare say, it happens to us a lot – some to various degrees up to binging and other eating disorders. Thankfully we girlfriends watch out for each other so hopefully we can help. Like you can do with this great girlfriend information. (Share it with any friends who may deal with emotional eating!)
Today’s BlogTalkRadio guest, ELLEN SHUMAN, shared this guest blog and passed along her knowledge and understanding of emotional eating:
Girlfriend to Girlfriend; Let’s Talk About Emotional and Binge Eating
by Ellen Shuman, Founder/Coach; A Weigh Out Members’ Circle, www.aweighout.com
As we start a new year, how many girlfriends are sitting around talking about:
1) Their weight
2) Resolutions to start a new diet
3) And maybe, if they’re being really honest with each other, about their struggles with emotional or binge eating?If you are an emotional eater, someone who turns to food to self-soothe or to avoid uncomfortable feelings, here’s what the coaches at the A Weigh Out Members’ Circle think it’s important to know:
- Diets don’t work for Emotional Eaters. Diets only address a possible symptom; the weight:not the underlying problem; emotional eating or the use of food to manage mood, or stuff uncomfortable feelings.
- People use “food thoughts”, food, and dieting to take care of emotional needs. When you fill your head with a food (or diet) thought, you temporarily push all other thoughts or feelings from your present consciousness. When we’re bored, stressed, angry or lonely, even when some of us get excited:to avoid the intensity of feeling, we obsess about food or a diet, instead. Emotional overeating and binge eating happen on continuum. At the far end of that continuum emotional or binge eating can become a person’s primary coping strategy:a person’s only way to self-comfort and regulate their moods.
- We recognize and respect the power of food when it is used as a coping strategy. It works: for a little while:then we feel like our best friend has betrayed us.
- We respect the resilience of people who have come to use food to take care of their emotional needs. They have likely made it through some pretty difficult emotional times, by having food at their side.
- We understand that emotional and binge eating impact a person’s ability to live their life to the fullest and to achieve desired physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
- We honor the pain that results when this coping strategy seemingly takes on a life of its own: and robs a person of theirs.
- We believe change occurs when the problem is approached with new insight in all of these arenas: emotional, physical, nutritional, and spiritual health.
- We know, from experience, that working through the feelings that drive a person to eat can be a challenging process: but, that process is nowhere near as painful as staying stuck in the problem.
- We trust that with support and new understanding a person can come to view change as a relief: and as an attainable choice.
- We know it takes courage to ask for help. But it is so worth it!
To learn more about overcoming emotional and binge eating, you and your girlfriends are invited to a FREE Phone Seminar and Three Weeks FREE in the A Weigh Out Members’ Circle. To participate, visit www.aweighout.com
ELLEN SHUMAN is the founder of A Weigh Out Life Coaching and Acoria Eating Disorder Treatment. She offers telephone coaching services worldwide, to people with emotional eating challenges and binge eating disorders. She believes in a non-shaming, non-diet approach toward improving emotional, physical, nutritional and spiritual health. She’s been on Oprah, featured in O Magazine and is a thought leader in this critical health friend. With so many women and girls dealing with these issues, we all can learn how to support our girlfriends and daughters. Ellen is also Vice President of the Binge Eating Disorder Association (BEDA), and Co-Chair of the Academy for Eating Disorders Special Interest Group on “Health at Every Size”, ellen@aweighout.com
Ellen’s previous podcast with Girlfriendology was one of our most popular – so don’t miss this too!
LISTEN IN as we talk with Ellen about:
- What emotional eating is and when does it turn into an eating disorder? (Along with binge-eating disorder)
- How the media is impacting our self-image and thoughts on dieting.
- Why diets don’t work and how to be healthy at any size.
- How friendship impacts emotional eating and can make a BIG difference.
- And the free teleseminar Ellen offers through her site – A Weigh Out.
Join us for this informative, helpful Girlfriendology BlogTalkRadio show with emotional eating coach, ELLEN SHUMAN!
Tags: Binge eating, binging, blogtalkradio, dieting, ellen shuman, emotional eating, health at every size, healthy
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