Eating emotionally and gaining weight...

[cassidy]

Ok I know I have said this before (but it is HUGE for me) - since going 100% raw, or darn close, I have been free from my eating disorder. It has been about a month. I am so happy I'm healing and feeling better. I never thought I would.
Anyway, I still binge on occasion. I deffinantly eat way too much and am gaining weight. Not too much. I'm trying not to worry about it and just be glad I'm healing and not engaging in binging on cooked and purging.
My question to you is do I just let it go and be happy with my body as it is healing... even though I AM binging still? Do you think that I should work on trying to stop binging after a few solid months raw? Not worry about it right now?
Or should I work on not binging right now?
I hate gaining weight and I hate eating for emotionally reasons.
What do you all think?

[Veganforlife]

Awwww, you must feel awesome that you are healing.
What are you binging on? Raw foods, or cooked foods?
I'd say if you feel strong enough to control the binging do it now, it you don't let it be.
This is something you have to handle. I'm sure others will pipe in with some comments.
I am glad you are on your way to healing. That is wonderful! YAY YOU!!!

[cassidy]

Thanks, veganforlife, for always replying to my posts!

I'm binging on raw. HUGE salads plus dessert when I'm not hungry. I know it's all good for me stuff. But I just shouldn't be eating, let alone binging, when I'm not hungry.
I'm wondering if I should just let it be for now. I'm going on vacation from wed. to sun. so maybe I can work on it a bit more when I get back.
Maybe simple foods like fruit and chopped veggies til dinner?

[Springtime]

Hi cassidy

I have never properly binged, but had times when I've been eating emotionally and when I've not been hungry in times of stress, anxiety etc. I have formed this pattern to deal with those, and other guilt-packed situations:

- When I feel what I'm doing, you know, suddenly become aware of what's up, I just freeze and slowly put down whatever I'm eating.
- I have a glass of water, and sit down away from the food.
- I just let all the anxiety/guilts flow through me. It's absolutly awful, but it's the only way for me. When I feel that tight spot in my chest, I take a deep breath, a sip of water, and keep sitting down where I am.
- When I feel better (I can sit jsut breathing for quite a while) I calmly clean up, put the food away where it belongs.
- I smell something soothing (vanilla candles does it for me) or take a shower and calm down, breathe, meditate, and most importantly: let the feelings flow, try not to block them away.

And also, maybe you shold turn your focus away from loosing weight? Weightloss is nothing compared to healing, and you seem to be on your way with the heal: GO YOU!
(In my yoga book the guru-dude says that once we turn focus away from the things we want, and instead look inside and focus on finding inner peace, the things our souls want and need start happening.)

Loads of luck and love to you! You can do it, I'm so sure you can!
love
/rebs

[SmilingRawDancer]

I have the same problem cassidy, and right now what I'm trying to do is just completely focus on my food while I eat, so that I satisfy whatever else there is besides feeling "full".....it seems to work!

[jnoelj]

Since you do have a history of eating disorders, try not to focus on the binging part. Eating has been such a big part of your life! When you substitue for raw food, I believe your body will tell you when it has had enough! (Eventually you will not want to binge because your body won't allow it, as long as you are eating raw food.) I found last week when I "fell off the wagon", I couldn't get enough food to be close to satisfied! What a terrible feeling! And, I still ate eventhough I knew I was going to pay a price. And, I did! Once I got back to eating 100% raw again, my body wouldn't let me do it again. My mind would want to (emotionally, that is), but I just couldn't!

I think that you are doing great, and just give it time.

[cassidy]

Thanks for all of the great advice.
I love the idea of actually eating at the table! Huh. What a concept! What I want to try to do is eat my meals with my daughter. She eats regular breakfast, snack, lunck, snack and dinner. I want to sit with her and eat. That would help me regulate a bit better.
Also waiting ten minutes for the emotion to resolve itself.
Drinking water... away from food. That is a good one.

For example, right now, I am wanting food. However, I am so stuffed! Not even barely hungry. I just want to EEAATT. I know I won't tonight. I certainly don't need to. I am going to take the advice of my fellow raw friends and finish up here and go read a book!

You guys have great advice thanks as always!

[konmai]

I think you are doing a great job as it. congrats! Like others have mentioned, if you think you can surpass the binging, you should definitely go for it! I'm not sure if it may be binging for you or maybe your body may still be addicted to the SAD and just wanting you to eat more healthy foods, since NOW it's being fed living food. :p I'm not sure.

You mentioned eatting emotionally? Food can be comforting. Maybe there other things you enjoy doing which can eliminate food as an option for coping. Eatting will only numb any negative emotions temporarily and then you're kind of left hating yourself afterwards...which can be a vicious cycle. Something to think about.

[SmilingRawDancer]

I stuffed myself today, even though I was totally full. I really feel disheartened on days like this....and the problem is that I'm conscious while I'm doing it: it's not like a black-out binge. I really need some encouragement...or a reason why I do this :-\

[cassidy]

Smilingkyle - isn't it intersting that when you binge on cooked food you DO pretty much numb out and ya, black out? Binging on raw isn't anywere near as satisfying. That's a good thing. I'm assuming with time the urge will fade. Just keep up with 100% raw and see where it takes you. I'm assuming it is going to take years to heal all the damage I have done to my body.

As for emotional eating, Konmai, you have a good point. It doesn't solve anything really. It, in fact, makes things worse!

Again thank you all for the encouraging words!

[Springtime]

smilingkyle: I sooooo know what you mean. I have been there, done that sooo many times. I haven't in a while now, though (thank god) and I hope I will never have to do that again. It's awful.

In my last post I wrote what I do. That works for the moment. I still have no idea WHY I do it, I really tried to analyze it and think about it, make plans on what to do, how much to eat in a day, setting times for myself when to eat and so on. That just made things worse for me. It only seemed to make food an even bigger deal, making the guilts from "failing" my "schedule" evern worse. So I just tried to let go. Eat when I'm hungry, quit eatig when I'm full. Not follow any times or rules, and when things went bad I did as I said above.
I think generally letting go of things is great, not analyzing or thinking, just doing what you feel is best.

Best of wishes to you!

Oh, another thing: maybe eating tooooo much at times when not actually hungry is a signal from the body that it needs more nutritients of some kind? My mom was hooked on butter until a food healer of some sort told her her body was craving omega-3, so she takes her capsules and her craves ar all gone...

loe
/rebs

[goodbeets]

Springtime is right, sometimes craving is related to an imbalance. When I got enough Calcium/Magnesium I stopped craving chocolate. I have been raw (with times off the wagon) for nearly a year and I have really been able to see that I overeat as a reaction to stress. Since going raw, I really am aware of it in myself, not just understanding because I read it in an article or something. Now able to witness this, I am able to make a choice. Sometimes the choice is, "whatever, eat more!" Sometimes I do like a previous entry suggested and just, "step away from the food, ma'am". I also see that if I am at, say, my grandmother's house, I will eat cooked food, then overeat it and really feel yucko but when I overeat on raw I am satisfied by MUCH MUCH less. I am starting a cleanse tomarrow (it is supposed to come today) to see if clearing the gunk from my intestines (I ate a lot of Big Macs when I was a kid-shudder, shudder) will help me with emotions and cravings as advertised. I will definately say, I have found it much better to deal with emotional eating while raw. On cooked I am just never satisfied, even when I am bloated and in pain. It really makes me want to turn people on to raw everywhere!! Good luck people.

[chilove]

Hello all,

What I've discovered about emotional eating through studying it a great deal and working with clients is that we typically do it to avoid feeling something (anxiety, boredom, sadness, fear, etc) and we do it out of habit (social situations, celebrations, etc). Part of it is that cooked food is very numbing and when we first go raw we often spend a lot of time trying to recapture that numbed out sensation. We feel uncomfortable being fully conscious and present at first. It is hard for us to just "be" with ourselves and our feelings. But if we stick with it and find the courage to be willing to resist the urge to eat we can learn that those feelings are 1) not nearly as horrible as we had feared they might be and 2) actually pass pretty quickly if we would just let ourselves feel them.

Another reason why avoiding cravings and emotional eating is so hard is that these behaviors are driven by how our brains have evolved to reward us for engaging in behaviors that are very important to our species, like eating and reproduction. If these behaviors weren't enjoyable we might not survive as a species, so our brain rewards us with flooding our brain with pleasurable feeling chemicals (dopamine for one) when we engage in them. We are always seeking this chemical reward because it feels so good. The idea is to replace the behavior that is troubling us (emotional eating) with something else that makes us feel good. Make sure that you have many pleasurable experiences in your life. Food is meant to pleasuable, but it shouldn't be the ONLY pleasurable experience in our lives.

Also, cognitive therapy teaches us that changing the way we think about cravings can help a great deal. Many times our thoughts make things much worse for us. We often tend to exagerate and catastrophize things. Here are some common unrealistic beliefs about cravings and some better ways of thinking about them:

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings are excruciating or unbearable.
Realistic Alternative:
They are uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings are constant.
Realistic Alternative:
Cravings are time limited. They will pass.

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings force one to use or act.
Realistic Alternative:
I choose to act on the craving. There are many urges I do not act on and I can resist any urge, no matter how strong it is.

Unrealistic Belief: I
I'll go crazy if I don't give in.
Realistic Alternative:
I haven't yet and won't. Actually, I will be more emotionally and physically healthy by learning to resist urges.

Emotional eating is largely a learned behavior and CAN be unlearned. It just takes some perserverance and some willingness to do the work. It also requires that we be adults for ourselves and be willing to experience some momentary discomfort when we don't give in to our cravings. Every time we are successful at doing this we realize that we are actually much stronger than we think we are. At the same time we need to be working on issues contributing to our wanting to eat emotionally (is our life working the way we'd like it to? do we need to develop more effective and healthier coping skills?) so that we aren't always having to "white knuckle" it and so that we can reach a place of having a comfortable, balanced relationship with food.

I hope this helps. I do know that conquering (or at the very least succesfully managing) emotional eating IS possible. I know that if I (a former compulsive overeater and junk food addict) can do it, ANYONE can. :-)

All the best,

Audrey
www.rawhealing.com

[SmilingRawDancer]

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings are excruciating or unbearable.
Realistic Alternative:
They are uncomfortable, but not unbearable.

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings are constant.
Realistic Alternative:
Cravings are time limited. They will pass.

Unrealistic Belief:
Cravings force one to use or act.
Realistic Alternative:
I choose to act on the craving. There are many urges I do not act on and I can resist any urge, no matter how strong it is.

Unrealistic Belief: I
I'll go crazy if I don't give in.
Realistic Alternative:
I haven't yet and won't. Actually, I will be more emotionally and physically healthy by learning to resist urges.


That's such a nice way of looking at it!

From my personal experiance, I do know that when I overeat it is directly related to either
A. Stress,
B. Boredom,
C. Anxiety

Only those three. When I have a test coming up, about an hour before I leave the house I'll eat handfulls of nuts. It's usually something crunchy.
If I know that I'll be spending the whole day at home, I'll eat just to fill time.
If I'm at Disneyland or out for a long time, I'll go into a mental "conservation" mode, and I'll eat the whole time, just out of fear that I might go hungry due to a lack of non-raw foods. (Yesterday I ate 1/2 cup of almonds at disneyland, along with a bag of dehydrated apples, even though I wasn't hungry.)

I am trying to work through it, and find something else to do instead of eat. I refuse to look at this as a life-long sentance, but I don't know exactly what to look at it as either.

[Springtime]

After reading and posting in this thread I found earlier today that I was going into stress-eating-mode. I was having a kiwi and thinking about what I might have next when it hit me WHY I was eating. Instead of doing that I made myself a cup of green tea and sat down and read. My anxieties were gone in minuties.

I think we need to talk about these things more often, it's really helpful reading about others and sharing stories

love
/reb