Emotional Eating And Your Feel Great Journey
Recently I hit a wall in my Feel Great Journey. I couldn't figure out why. I just quit progressing. I was eating about 1 or 2 raw meals a day for several days, exercising and starting to sleep better. Then I would go way off and have all cooked food, several candy bars a day, maybe some ice cream and just feel terrible for seemingly no reason. I was so frustrated.
One day I started thinking about how I was feeling, what emotions I was experiencing right before I started eating a candy bar. I realized I was eating junk food to stuff emotions and to keep from feeling.
Food is a drug. Food and the act of eating food releases all kinds of hormones and activates many systems in our bodies. Some of those systems make us feel good. That's what I wanted, to feel good.
I knew that I could not get past this without walking through the feelings and coming out on the other side. I have a very good analogy of this. Have you seen those invisible fences for dogs? Basically, it's a wire buried underground that gives off a signal at a specific frequency that can't be heard. The dog wears a collar that gives him a mild shock when he comes near the underground wire. That keeps the dog inside the wire boundary.
Stuffing emotions by eating is similar to the dog getting near the fence line and getting a mild shock. He then runs back into the yard and, similarly, we run to the bad food. He doesn't want to hurt and neither do we. But we are smarter. If we run through the fence line, enduring the shock for a short period, we can be free of what is keeping us prisoner. Do you see that?
I am in the process of researching a site where I can send you for specific help. So, connect to the RSS feed for
the Feel Great After 50 Blog and I will post information when I find it. The problem I'm running into with my research is that most people just tell you to ignore the pain or stuff it another way and that won't help you since the emotions will come back again anyway. In the meantime, try this site: The Ultimate Journey.
