Lose Weight, End Overeating, Stop Bingeing: Learn The Foundational Skill

The importance of feeling a feeling does not just apply to deep negative emotions like loss and grief and pain. Feeling the feeling also must be applied to the “more neutral feelings” like boredom or restlessness if you want to stop over eating and bingeing (many of us eat out of boredom and restlessness). We are not in intense emotional pain exactly; we’re just feeling restless or agitated or bored. So many of us experience a negative emotion and immediately look for food or drink to stop it, interrupt it, soothe it, remove it. We don’t want to feel what we are feeling and so our habit brain kicks in and compels and urges us to grab food. And It really does work in the moment. In the moment of eating we experience relief, distraction, maybe even relaxation. The problem is that it only works momentarily and then the after effects are that much worse: the negative emotion builds in us as it was never actually processed and on top of that we feel shame, guilt and remorse (and sometimes physical pain) from over eating, bingeing. So now we are dealing with an even bigger and badder negative emotion that we look to get rid of which leads to more over-eating, binging, restricting; whatever behavior brings us momentary relief. But again the cycle continues as we have not processed through any emotions. Take a listen to learn the skill of actually processing your emotions so you can end the over-eating, the bingeing behaviors for good.