| Eating my emotions | | Print | |
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The process I went through in starting to love and nurture myself, brought up alot of emotions. One thing I do know is that I am emotional, I never thought I was, actually I never let myself be emotional. So what does this have to do with weight loss? Everything! For so long I thought it was wrong to feel anger, sadness, grief and fear any negative emotion that comes from these eg: Frustration, anxiety, scared etc.... most of these are fear based emotions, will I have enough money? Will he love me? Am I good enough? How often do we think and feel this during the day? So to stop myself feeling this I would eat. Sometimes I would stuff myself so full I felt so sick yet inside I was still feeling empty. Binge eating! Most of us have done it at sometime. Sometimes I eat because of negative emotions and sometimes I eat for positive. I get so mixed up with how I feel, because I never truly let myself feel anything. I would tell myself that I'm eating healthy food and this would be ok, and I was however I was just eating alot of it. I had to stop and that is what I did....I stopped. Instead of going to the fridge when I was feeling emotional I would just stop sit and feel. At first it was uncomfortable, very uncomfortable. My mind would play tricks get me side tracked and talk me into wanting to eat. I would just sit there, sweating it out just feeling. I had never done this, I had never allowed myself to feel, especially negative emotions. I found anger the hardest, I was always wanting to be a good person, a nice person. Yet to feel angry was tough. I never vented my anger at anyone I would just take myself away quietly and allow myself to feel it privately. Sometime I would pick up the pillow and scream into it, cry, slam doors. It was hard and I have to say still is. How do I get past this? I started to ask myself what was behind the anger? On the surface I'm angry with someone else, when I stopped and really thought of it, I was angry at myself. No matter who or what the situation, when I really stopped and thought about it, it always came back to me. And the reasons were endless, the main one's that kept coming up are ‘How did I let myself get so fat? How can I have been so unloving to myself? And ‘How can I ever accept myself?' I kept doing this and as I started to feel, I became more emotional, I learnt how to express myself better if I was unhappy with the situation. I made alot of mistakes, huge ones. I'm not perfect and far from it, however I just started speaking my truth on how I felt. Sometimes I find it easier and sometimes I still make a huge mess of it. The thing is I'm feeling, I don't eat my emotions as much. Its going to take a long time to really curb the instinct to eat instead of feel, I've been doing it my whole life. Read Penny's previous blog entries: |