How To Overcome Toxic Limiting Beliefs Around Food and Body

Stefanie Grace with a doughnut and salad - diet culture, toxic limiting beliefs around food and body

What Beliefs Do You Have When It Comes to Food and Body?

Food is the enemy! My appetite is bad! I hate my body!

For many years I lived my life being guided with these negative, limiting and toxic beliefs around my body and the food I eat. I would not say it out loud, because I was ashamed, but I constantly was accompanied with the thoughts.

These thoughts were limiting my life to a degree I was not aware of at the time. It sounds very hard, but it’s true:
I secretly wished I would not have a sense of taste, because then I would not crave for so much food. I truly believed my appetite was the reason for my binge eating, comfort eating…

It was very clear to me, if I did not know how something tastes I could not have the cravings for it, which means I would eat less, which means I would lose weight and losing weight was the only way to reach happiness.

And in my reality everything would be ok if only I would have the perfect body. I would find peace and ease in life, as soon as I reached a certain weight and fitted in a certain size.

“If only I would have the perfect body, everything would be ok forever!”

That was a very toxic belief!

The trick with our belief system is, the more power we give them, the more they become our reality. So in order to change the relationship with food we first have to become aware of our toxic beliefs.

So ask yourself on this point:

  • What beliefs do I have when it comes to food and body?
  • Do they lead to a relaxed relationship, to freedom?
  • Or do they always bring me to a point where I restrict eating?
Stefanie Grace, looking at a doughnut.

How Toxic Beliefs Can Affect Our Body:

Here’s a little secret: Toxic negative beliefs can cause greater damage to body, mind and soul than any low quality food!!!

Despite the fact that our beliefs become our reality, they do affect our body on a physiological level. Whenever we fear, get anxious, angry or fulfilled with hate our body reacts in a stress response and the sympathetic nervous system gets activated and dominates. We breathe more shallowly and faster (oftentimes without being consciously aware of it), our heart rate gets faster, blood pressure rises and insulin and cortisol in our body increases.

When the body is in this survival mode the metabolism shuts down.
When you’re being chased by a lion, you don’t have time to think about rest and digestion.

  • The majority of the blood gets pumped into the limbs, because they need to be ready and active in case we need to run away or fight.
  • Cortisol inhibits muscle growth and high insulin can cause dysregulation of the appetite,
  • and because the body fears for life it strongly holds on to every single calorie.

Imagine now you are eating/ not eating/ training/ resting in a constant fight or flight (survival response) mode.

No wonder why it seems so hard to lose weight, why we think we have a slow metabolism and an appetite which is out of control… It’s NOT your fault, it’s not because you are weak, or have less willpower than others. No, it’s the constant stress response you are in BECAUSE OF the toxic beliefs you have about your body and the food you eat.

“I am learning to take care and nourish
my body in a loving way.”

What Can We Do Now in Order To Change?

Simple. Get out of the stress response, activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the “rest & digest” mode of the body. When the body does not have to fear for survival, it can relax.

The heart rate and blood pressure regulate themselves, the breath is deep and slow and the metabolism runs at full speed. The body happily uses the calories and nutrients because it does not have to fear starving.

Using the BREATHE is the easiest way to get your body into a relaxed mode and out of stress response. Once you breathe like a relaxed person your body will notice and your brain will think “Oh I am breathing like a relaxed person I must be relaxed then”, and switches into relaxed mode, the parasympathetic nervous system dominates and your whole body physiology changes.

As mentioned before, first you have to become aware of this pattern, then catch yourself in these moments and decide to breathe deep and slow as long as you can/want/need.

BUT this has not yet solved the root cause of the stress response: the toxic negative beliefs.

 

Stefanie Grace happy in the kitchen preparing food

Again, become aware of the beliefs, and then CHANGE them. 

On a certain point, when we have ingrained some beliefs for many years, it is hard to just swap them into a positive statement. For example, if you have told yourself your whole life: “I hate my body”, it will be tricky to just change from one day to another into: “I love my body.” Because you just won’t BELIEVE it.

BUT you can start with a step in between and change “I hate my body” to ”I am learning to take care and nourish my body in a loving way.

Instead of “Food is the enemy” let’s say: “Food is nourishing me” and instead of “My appetite is bad”, let’s try: “I am learning to regulate my appetite.”

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And always remember: if you don’t change anything – nothing will change.
It’s a practice and you just can not fail.

Thank yourself for taking the time to read, as I do.

Love & Light, yours Grace.

How To Overcome Emotional Eating?

Overcome Emotional Eating

What Is Emotional Eating and Why Is It Happening?

Let me answer this question with a practical example with a short story about Sarah (could be any other name!), a woman in her mid-30s who is actually quite content with her life if it weren’t for this one BIG thing that weighs on her every day.

Sarah works in an office. She likes her job and enjoys working overtime sometimes. She is very mindful of healthy, freshly prepared food and takes food to work every day, but every night when she gets home she finds herself snacking on sweets in front of the fridge. 

Every evening when she comes into the apartment she immediately heads for the kitchen as if remote controlled. She is not hungry, she knows that, but still she can’t help it. The desire is too great. 

She has often tried to trick herself, to change the habit by trying to hide the chocolate in another drawer, or to eat an apple instead, but none of her attempts have succeeded. Each time she gives in at the end and runs back to the fridge. Even the attempt to buy no chocolate at all failed. As she even took the effort to run to the store again.

The frustration of emotional eating in front of the fridge

When Guilt and Shame Kicks In, the Vicious Cycle Begins

Sarah does not understand what’s “wrong” with her. She feels weak and undisciplined. 
“Others can do it, can’t they?”
“I just don’t have enough control over myself.”

She begins to verbally beat up on herself more and more. As a failure, as a loser who can’t manage to simply do without. The feelings of guilt increase more and more and she feels incredibly ashamed of herself. 

Every night she goes to bed with the same good resolution:Tomorrow I’ll start all over again. Tomorrow night I’ll make it, it’s too late for today, but tomorrow I’ll start the new diet.” 

And every day the same game starts all over again. Sarah is caught in the vicious cycle. 

The reason why Sarah’s diets don’t work is because they don’t treat the cause of her problem, but only the symptoms. 

She tries to control her eating by forbidding herself to eat – that requires a lot of energy and always puts her in the same position of giving in and overeating on sweets. 

The root cause is not that she is too undisciplined, has no control over herself, or doesn’t have enough willpower…. The root cause lies in an emotion that is not given space. And this is it: 

Emotional eating is when we use eating to cope with feelings.

And this is where it is important to start. Sarah tries to satisfy an emotional hunger with chocolate every evening. To fill an emotional hole that hasn’t gotten enough attention. 

Only after Sarah starts to look more into herself, tries to find out with curiosity and compassion which feelings need more space and how she can take care of these emotions, she is able to not even think about the chocolate anymore. 

Sarah might feel lonely because she lives alone in the apartement, she might be overwhelmed at work, she might just need more self care in any way… 

Emotional eating is when we use eating to cope with feelings.

Practical Tips to Break Out of the Vicious Circle

  • Observe yourself: When do you eat emotionally?
    When do you eat remotely, without feeling that you can’t stop?
    When do you eat even though you are not hungry?
    When do you not eat at all?
    When do you feel guilty and ashamed after eating?

  • Stay curious and in compassion with yourself.
    As soon as you become aware of these moments, ask yourself the question:
    “Why did I reach for food? How do I feel right now? Is there a feeling that I didn’t want to allow?”

  • Ask yourself what you are really hungry for.
    If it’s not physical hunger, maybe you’re hungry for rest, hungry for connection, for sports, for nature, for love, for a warm bath,….

Make it a habit: every time you catch yourself eating emotionally. To pause briefly, breathe deeply, and ask yourself:

What am I REALLY hungry for?

Take care of yourself and the emotions that need space: 

  • Maybe you are stressed – then take some time out.
  • Maybe you feel alone – then call a friend
  • Maybe you feel sad – then cry
  • Maybe you are angry – then scream or do some exercise, or dance
  • Whats on your list? 
How to overcome emotional eating

Thank you so much for taking the time to read the article.

I hope I was able to give you a brief and practical overview of what emotional eating is all about.

I could write a book about it, because there is so much to say, and will do so. But until then – here are easy to digest blog posts on the topics.

And whenever you’d like some support along the way, don’t hesitate to reach out to me.

All the love!