BEE #130: Not Happy With Your Body? It's Time To Address These 3 Things

Understanding the Root Causes of Emotional Eating

In this episode of the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast, I discuss the misunderstood triggers behind dissatisfaction with our bodies and the pitfalls of superficial solutions like dieting and excessive exercise. I emphasize the importance of addressing deeper issues stemming from our childhood experiences, stress reactions, and negative self-talk. I advocate for a more profound, introspective approach to overcoming emotional eating and body dissatisfaction, recommending the help of therapy or coaching to support this journey.

00:00 Welcome to the Breakthrough Emotional Eating Podcast
00:09 The Misconception of Body Displeasure and Emotional Eating
01:51 Understanding the Root Causes of Emotional Eating
04:35 The Three Critical Areas to Examine for Body Satisfaction
04:57 The Impact of Childhood Experiences on Emotional Eating
10:12 The Role of Stress and Self-Talk in Emotional Eating
16:39 Concluding Thoughts and Encouragement

If you are ready to take your first steps towards addressing your emotional eating, check out my NEW online course, Stop Dieting/Start Feeling. It will provide you with everything you need to move forward with managing your emotional eating and changing your relationship with food. Click here and learn more about this revolutionary new course: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com/stop-dieting-start-feeling

Connect with me online:

1. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/breakthroughemotionaleating/
2. You Tube channel, Kristin Jones Coaching: https://www.youtube.com/@KristinJonesCoaching44
3 . Website: https://www.kristinjonescoaching.com

If you want to learn more about a non-diet approach to weight loss, get my FREE Stop Dieting Guide. Go to https://go.kristinjonescoaching.com/stop-dieting-guide

Needing more specific and direct support for your emotional eating and overeating? Check out my online course, Stop Dieting Start Feeling, and my personalized coaching program, Breakthrough To You.

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Transcript

0:00

Hi, and welcome to the breakthrough, emotional eating podcast. My name is Kristin Jones and thank you so much for joining me this week. There have been so many instances in the last few days that prompted me to want to jump on and record a podcast and the reason why is I've been presented with lots of examples. I have individuals or situations where people have wanted or had been displeased with their bodies and they're not happy with their bodies. And they're looking at the wrong things. They're looking at the wrong parts of their life. If there is something that they're displeased with about their bodies. Now, I say, Displeased with their bodies. And it could be that they've gained weight. Or it could just be that they just, they don't realistically see themselves, or they have gained a little bit of weight. It doesn't make them overweight, but they're not pleased with how they look. There are so many ranges and so many spectrums when it comes to body dysmorphia and people not liking themselves and not liking their own bodies. And what that does and the reactions that we have as a result of that. And some people will inter, they don't like themselves. They don't like their bodies and they will continue to eat and they will get bigger and bigger. There's other people who will not like their bodies they will stop eating completely and they will starve themselves and they will punish themselves in that way. Both are punishments. But the most important thing that I think most professionals, most weight loss professionals, most people don't recognize is that when that situation is happening, when someone is displeased with their appearance, displeased with their body or have gained weight. It really has nothing to do with what they're eating. Nothing. It doesn't. You can change everything you eat. You can change how much exercise you do. And you can lose weight. Absolutely. But if you don't get to, what's really behind why all that happened in the first place and why you respond with food, why you turn to food, why food becomes the thing that you go to to alleviate the discomfort in your life. If you don't address that you have climbed aboard the diet rollercoaster, and you are going to keep going over and over. You're going to go on that ride a whole lot times. And it's going to make you sick eventually. It's not going to be a good thing. So it's really important. That when people start to feel that discomfort with themselves the quick and easy thing is to immediately turn to food and say, okay, what can I cut out? What can I stop eating? How much more exercise can I do? How many more classes can I take? How many more miles can I run? And that's the last thing you need to be looking at. That's not what you need to be looking at. You need to be looking at, what am I thinking? What am I saying to myself and what are the memories and the automatic behaviors that are popping up, that I automatically do? I don't really like that. I do, but I do them anyway because they're just part of who I am. How many times have you heard somebody say that? Y'all, it's just who I am. It's just the way I am. Y'all we don't have to buy into that. We get to be who we want to be. In every moment of every single day. So if you don't like a reaction that you're having, you get to change it. Now is it work? Heck. Yeah. Is it worth it? 100%. But to just say, oh, that's just the way I am. It's just how, it's just how I do things. It's just, I fly off the handle. I yell at people. I, get angry really quickly. I throw things. Oh, no, those are learned behaviors. Those are learned beliefs that's okay to do. And we can change all of those things in every moment of every day. And like I said, it's not a quick fix. It doesn't take five minutes of focusing on it for it to change. But there are steps that you can take. So what I want to tell you today in today's podcast is I want to talk about the three areas of your life that you need to examine and take a look at if you are not happy with your body, as it is. And again, We're not looking at what you're eating or we're not looking at how much exercise you're doing. That is not important. So the first area and the area that honestly most people in their hearts know that this word is where it comes from and a lot of people can verbalize and say, oh, I know where this came from, I know why I do And it's because it comes from their childhood, and they know exactly what happened and what was said and how things were done. But actually digging in and doing the work to uncover those things and then to process them and then to decide, I'm not going to think that way anymore. I'm going to make, I'm going to choose a different path. I'm going to choose different thoughts and different actions. That's a whole different thing. Cause y'all, it's painful. It is hard to do. But you will keep repeating the same patterns over and over again. If you don't get to what the root cause is. Now. I always want to say. I am not a parent. So I cannot speak about parenting. But I can tell you that I have the utmost respect and admiration for anyone who brings a child into this world, because I have watched my siblings and a number of friends. Do it. And. It is hard work. It is so difficult. And it is something it is it's thankless. And it is just the hardest job in the world. And nobody does it, right? No one. There is not a parent out there that does it all correctly. Everybody parents, their kids. With the tools that they have in the best way possible. That's it. Do they make mistakes all the time. That's it. You make mistakes and you try to fix them. And you let your kids know that you love them, but. There are also a lot of people who have kids who probably shouldn't have kids. And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who didn't get the opportunity. Two. Have a normal functioning life because they did not, they were not raised. By people who were capable of raising them in a way that allowed them to feel nurtured and loved and cared for. And we can be angry about that. Sure, absolutely. Was it wrong? Of course. We can dwell on it. We can blame that. And we can sit in that and say, okay this is what this is. I guess I was raised by horrible people. Okay. I just have to be a horrible person. No. Every day, we get to decide, how do we want to do this? How do we want it? How do we want to grow? How do we want to change? How do we want to evolve? And the evolution is there. And you can do it. But you just can't be afraid to open up that box. Because there is so much freedom. Underneath the lid of that box. So I encourage people to really. Be brave and be courageous. And if things aren't working for you. You got to uncover some things. And it's not blaming. It's not pointing the finger. It's not saying, oh, mom and dad, you did this to me. It's all right. Did the best they could. And now I get to make a decision about doing things differently and thinking differently and creating different beliefs for myself. Because that is what really has to be done. We get all almost all of our beliefs. About ourselves. Within the first six years of our lives. We have established everything. All of it has been laid out. So we really need. To look back and figure out okay. Where are some things that I need to start looking at things differently. I need to start making some changes because my life right now, as an adult is not functioning in the way that I want it to. And I really want to make it better, but I got to go back and I got to figure out where this happened and how to correct it. And how to make some different changes. It makes them different changes and choices. And decide. How am I going to move forward? And so looking at your childhood and I really strongly. Encourage people to do that with a professional. In fact it's absolutely paramount. Did you do it with a professional? It's so very valuable to, to ha I've had therapy of three different bouts of therapy. I've seen. Two different life coaches. I have done. Hip hypnosis. I have, really looked into. Many of the aspects of my childhood. And now it wasn't easy, but it was absolutely. Or is it an absolutely necessary. For me to move past my emotional eating for me to move in a default. In a positive direction with my emotional eating. Now, am I ever going to be clear of it? Is it ever going to be done and over and behind me? Now it's always there. It's always a part of me and I've embraced that. But. I've done a lot of work and I continue to do work every day. Everyday I can do you do work on myself and on my beliefs about myself. And on how I look at things and how I respond to things. So first off, Childhood. Second. Is what. Is your reaction? How do you respond? Distress. And does stress. Trigger. Something back from your childhood. It's always going to come back to the childhood, but the stress that we face in our present day and our present life. It brings up all sorts of things from childhood. And it's paramount that you look at that and figure out, okay, where did I learn that stress reaction? And if it's not working for me, how do I do things differently? Again, Always going to come back to working on figuring out where, how these things happened. Where they developed, and then making the commitment to yourself that you're going to, you're going to look, you're going to do the work. You're going to dig deep, and you're going to start to make small incremental changes in how you think about yourself, how you value yourself, and how you give yourself worth. So again, stress reactions, huge when it comes to emotional eating. Absolutely, that is the thing that holds people up is. For one, no one's life is ever going to be stress-free. Ever. But when we don't respond to stress appropriately, And we don't allow ourselves to feel emotions, or we overfill and we go right back to being five years old, that's when we grab the cookies. That's when we grabbed the hamburger. That's when we go through the drive-thru. Because of that makes us feel better. And maybe someone did that for us in our childhood, or maybe not, but that makes us feel better. And so it's always that reaction. What do we, how do we react? And then what does that bring up in us that makes us feel like, oh, I know what to do. Oh, I know what to do. A cookie. Maybe you feel better. Chocolate will make me feel better. And so how do you respond to stress? And how we can never get rid of it. But how can you learn? To better respond and be better equipped. To be able to make better choices. The third area. That. Is absolutely a must. Is examining, and this is a hard one. Examining and being honest about your self-talk. How do you speak about yourself? How do you speak to yourself? What are the words that you say about yourself and most of the time they're silent. Most of the time they are inside the prison, it is in your head that can be so brutal when you really pay attention to what you say to yourself. It can be horrifying. That you would never say this to a child, you would never say this to your friend. But you have no problem saying it to yourself. And again, Same result as when you don't know how to handle the stress. What makes me feel better? Oh, That ice cream is going to make me feel better. You start talking negatively to yourself. You start that downward spiral. And for some people it's turning to drugs for some people it's alcohol. I was always afraid of those things. So for me, it was always food because food is the easiest and most convenient. And most easily accessible. But it always made me feel better. Always. In that moment. So looking at and really getting really clear on how do I talk to myself? What are the things that I say? And what do I really think about myself? If I don't think very highly of myself, that's the first place I need to look. I need to figure out wow. Why don't. I don't. I like myself. Why am I saying these things to myself? There's nobody deserves to be spoken to in the way that most of us at times speak to ourselves. And again, It's not just the action, it's the repercussions that come from it. And those are, I don't feel good, I feel bad about myself, I talk bad about myself. I encourage other people to talk bad about me. And then I don't feel good. So what do I do? I eat a bag of cookies. That's it's such a natural reaction and it's something oftentimes we learned in childhood. Oftentimes it's repeating patterns. Sometimes it's something new that we learned. But it's 100% fixable. It's 100% acknowledgeable and you can do something about it. So acknowledging and recognizing that. We all had these nobody was raised perfectly and I wouldn't, I would never, ever think about possibly blaming parents. We all do the best we can. But then how do we ourselves. Sometimes we have to take care of ourselves first and then encourage other people to do the same thing. Looking at your eating, looking at your exercise, those are just distractions because you don't want to look at what's really going on how you're really feeling. And acknowledging and owning up to what's really bothering me now. It's not, it might not even be that I've put on a few extra pounds. It might not be that I don't like my body. It's just, that's an easier thing to look at then I don't feel like I'm worthy. I don't feel like I matter. I don't feel like I'm important to anyone. No one cares about me. I don't care about myself. That's what really, that's the core issue and that's what needs to be addressed. So we can stop trying to do all this fancy dieting and exercise and joining clubs and doing, you can do all that. But don't do it to lose weight. Don't do it to start liking your body. Liking your body is an inside heart job and it's a soul job and once you figure those pieces out. The weight and your body becomes so easy. That's not even an issue anymore because you've dealt with what the real background is. You dealt with what the real cause is. And then the stuff just becomes it's, it melts away. It doesn't even become an issue anymore. So again, Just to recap. If you're not liking your body, if you're not feeling comfortable in your own skin. Please don't change what you're eating. Please don't make dramatic changes. Start looking at. Your childhood start looking at how you feel about yourself. Start looking at how you respond to stress and the words that you say to yourself. That is going to get you a lot farther and you want to do that with a reputable coach or a therapist because you want that support. You want somebody helping you through that. You want somebody who can listen and be impartial. And just be that sounding board for you. It's so very important. All right. Hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you next week. Take care.