Overcoming Emotional Eating

Have you ever found yourself being defensive over what others have said? Do you react to comments and take it upon yourself to prove that you are right?

This tactic only ever makes us feel vulnerable, insecure and small. It is an experience that will inevitably lead us to either binge or restrict our food intake. Either way, we lose if we cannot overcome emotional eating.

Let's take time to explore what triggers these eating disorders for you by examining your behaviour pattern.

Be aware of when:

1. You feel like you have been put on the defensive (you're being attacked or judged by others).

2. You are suddenly anxious or feeling insecure with someone.

3. You feel like to have to have the "right" answer on the fly.

4. You hear yourself explaining your reasons for certain choices, actions or beliefs in a tone other than peaceful and chill.

5. You hear yourself justifying your behaviour; arguing about your rightness; rather than just acknowledging it didn't work for the other person or that you dropped the ball, forgot, or chose not to follow through.

When you notice these indicators of defensiveness and excuse making, start by stop talking, even if you're in mid-sentence. Remove yourself from the situation as quickly as possible.

Then sit down with you pen and paper or lap top/ipad/etc. and ask yourself the following questions:

1. What are you telling yourself about yourself vs. that person/situation? What do they have or know that you don't?

2. Is there really a right and a wrong? They might think so, but do you have to agree with them? Can't you both be right?

3. What do you know that led you to think or behave as you did? What do they believe or know that led them to judge that or think and behave as they did? What was their part in it and what was yours? Could you own your part without taking all the responsibility? Can you simply say, "You know, I was thinking about X and I can see what you mean...." And let go of whether they own their bit or not. You know your part has been taken care of; you did the adult thing; and you know that it wasn't all you, that your perspective had validity too.

4. Defensiveness implies that you are feeling anxious because you believe you need that person's approval and you believe that you're not getting it or not going to get it. Can you let go of needing their agreement or approval in order to be able to see the truth in your perspective? If they never ever saw "it" your way, could you still be right in your actions based on your perspective at the time?

5. Defensiveness implies that you have given yourself just two options - your way or their way. Explore how you could make room for both. What truth can you find in their perspective? What truth can you find in yours?

6. What solution could you come to that meets the needs of all parties? DO NOT ever agree to something that doesn't meet your needs. If you can't find a solution that meets your needs as well as theirs in some way, your responsibility is to yourself first and the two of you are going to have to agree to take care of your own needs in this situation. (This is exceptionally rare! Maybe one situation in 100.)

Review your answers and explore your thoughts in response to a situation that triggered some insecurity or defensiveness for you.

Remember, your use of food to cope and your body image stress are inextricably linked to how you are thinking in these or similar situations. The more you understand what triggers your eating disorder, the less you'll need to engage in restriction (dieting, anorexia), binging (overeating) or purging. You can learn to recover from your eating disorder.

For over 15 years, personal change-agent Michelle Morand has been helping people of all ages and all walks of life stop using food to cope. A recovered compulsive eater, her personal story, and her professional caring and gentle approach, continually inspires those who struggle with eating disorders.

Through her company, The CEDRIC Centre for Counselling, inc., she provides face-to-face, email, and telephone coaching to people around the globe. Products include a variety of downloadable audio and video selections, print and downloadable workbooks, live workshops and a web-based group counselling program.

Author of Food is not the Problem: Deal With What Is! Michelle is a skilled educator and lecturer and frequently appears at live health shows, on radio and TV, and in print media.

Visit The CEDRIC Centre website and sign up for the free newsletter at http://www.cedriccentre.com/

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Powerful Advice for Overcoming Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating

1. Know that diets aren't the answer.

Bulimics and binge eaters or those desiring weight loss often think that dieting is the answer. Well, it's not and here's why. The facts speak for themselves when repeated studies on dieting as a way to lose weight show that the failure rate is over 90%. That's astonishingly high. The diet industry makes billions of dollars exploiting this well known fact. It is vested in your failure, it doesn't want you to lose weight and be lean, happy and healthy. It wants you to buy more diet products, plans and potions where you end up on this merry-go-round which is doomed to failure, spending more money in the process.

Don't ever diet again. NLP and hypnotherapeutic methods of helping sufferers to overcome bulimia and binge eating have a 70% success rate. Doesn't that sound better than the 90% failure rate of conventional dieting?!

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. Wouldn't it be better to model your behaviour on something that works? By learning to eat like a happy, lean and healthy person does, you give yourself the maximum chance of success of breaking free of your destructive relationship with food. You can achieve this by using NLP and hypnotherapy.

2. Thinking things will improve on their own just isn't true. Things won't improve on their own and that's a fact.

This is vital to understand and acknowledge if you're looking to stop bulimia and binge eating. Unless you massively change your conscious and unconscious beliefs, you will keep on doing the same. At the moment, you are hard wired to your habit of binging. Like most sufferers, you likely have underlying beliefs about yourself such as 'I'm greedy', 'I'm not good enough' or 'I never succeed at weight loss'. These must change in order to break free from your habitual binging and purging if you're a bulimic.

The good news is, you can change your unhelpful unconscious thoughts around eating by yourself and the even better news is, it only takes seconds. Take your worst negative statement about yourself. A common one is "I'll never be slim and I don't deserve to be slim and happy". Be aware of whatever your statement is and listen to it, simply noticing it when it speaks. Now, visualise a little, fluffy duckling sitting on your hand saying this same statement in its cute, 'quacky' voice. It doesn't sound so true now does it? You can also use a chipmonk's voice or something equally as ridiculous sounding.

This is just one of many simple techniques to get you on the road to being slim, happy and healthy. While you're focusing on these techniques, the weight drops off by itself. These techniques and more are just waiting for you to discover in the world of NLP and hypnosis which will help you overcome bulimia and binge eating forever.

Birmingham UK based hypnotherapist and NLP trainer Debbie Williams invites you to claim your free EBook 'The 7 mistakes binge eaters and bulimics make keeping them trapped forever ' http://www.stopbulimia.co.uk/

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