272-Comfort Eating: Curiosity or Judgment

Let's unpack comfort eating or eating for comfort. Comfort is defined as a state of ease and freedom from pain or constraint. When we eat for comfort, we feel uncomfortable; we don't want to feel discomfort, so we look for a solution to not feel comfortable and that solution is food. So we comfort eat. Sounds like a pretty legitimate action… it is a coping tool. It's a variation of the larger family of emotional eating- whereby you eat in response to an emotion. Most often, uncomfortable emotions like stress. Stress eating, comfort eating, emotional eating - all the same thing - using food to cope with physical or emotional discomfort. Why is it a problem to solve? Is comfort eating a problem? Let's imagine that same person feels the same level of discomfort, but instead of opening the fridge or the cupboard and reaching for food, that same person would say go for a run. Would it be a problem to solve? …. Interesting question, right?… but necessary. Especially as women, we must challenge all the beliefs we have learned about food, body and health. Remember that diet culture was created by Patriarchy in order to keep women obedient and insecure. Why is it that comfort eating is a problem to solve for women? What diet culture is telling us is that it will lead you to eat too much, eat the "bad food," and gain weight. Diet gurus will tell you that if you could only control your emotional eating, then their diet would work… and you'd be thin! Familiar… But here's my question to you: Would you even desire to eat to comfort yourself if we weren't relentlessly chasing the thin ideal??? Think about that for a minute?... How much of our discomfort physically and emotionally that we appease with food is caused by the relentless pursuit of the thin ideal, therefore diet culture A shit load of it... lol. Since this is a feminist podcast that promotes women empowerment with food and their body… I'm not going to teach to shame you for comfort eating or tell you that it is to be avoided. No… that's diet culture way.   In this podcast episode, we will unpack this subject in a non-diet way... by asking WHY. What you'll learn listening to this episode: The reason why diet culture of comfort eating is so toxic The non-Diet approach to comfort eating The two questions to ask yourself when feeling the urge to eat emotionally Comfort food versus Comfort eating Mentioned on the show: Podcast Roadmap Conquer & Thrive