Stress Eating Is NOT The Problem

I can’t tell you how many posts I have read with statements like “I am gaining weight because I am stress eating!”

Many people seem to have an awareness that something is driving them to eat, and it’s easy to focus on that as the problem.

Stress eating itself is NOT the problem. It is whatever is driving you to turn to a drug, like food in the first place. When you are done eating the cookies, what drove you to the cookies in the first place is still there.

The major task to avoid stress eating and it’s accompanying vicious cycle of weight gain is this – how do you face what you don’t want to face without food?

How do you accept what you don’t want to accept without numbing out the feelings, or simply distracting yourself with food . . . and then obsessing over why you are gaining weight?

Imagine being able to accept any feeling that comes along. Imagine not scaring yourself with your own thoughts, so much so that you go running off to the refrigerator to ease the pain, or at least not have to think about it for the brief moment of chocolate passion. So much so that you feel the need to go unconscious.

Imagine accepting your life as it is, embracing every chaotic moment that wasn’t supposed to be this way, celebrating every bit of imperfection that you find in everyday life. Fully inhabiting your life, as it is. Being with it, being in it. “Being with” every feeling, as you celebrate the gift of waking up every day.

Imagine accepting and loving your life as it is, instead of constantly searching and pining for what you think it should have been.

When you live in the present, there is no stress. Therefore there is no stress eating. Food doesn’t run your life, and your life doesn’t get organized around food and weight issues. You can actually focus on and enjoy what’s important.

Yes, you still may need to make some changes in your life. You may need to learn to tolerate those feelings that send you to the fridge. You may need to accept things in your life that you can’t control, aspects of your life that turned out differently than you thought.

But life is a lot sweeter when you actually stay awake for it . . .

source : stresseating

Posted in: Stress Eating