Bonus Course! The Emotional Eating Healing Experience
Session #1:
Assessing Your Emotional Eating Patterns
Let’ start this course by assessing why you turn to food. Answering the following questions below will help you begin to uncover what’s been going on with your emotional eating patterns as of late.
Here are a few questions to ask yourself –
1. When are you engaging in emotional eating – morning, afternoon, late afternoon or evening?
2. What does your emotional eating feel like to you? Comforting, out of control, numbing?
3. What does your emotional eating look like? By yourself, socializing, sneak eating, late at night, after work?
4. Is your emotional eating different during the week vs. the weekend? How so?
Parts Work and Craving Karen-
You have incredible and unique parts of you. You have the thin part of you, the happy part of you, the successful part of you, the lonely part of you, etc. All of your amazing parts , make you the amazing you that you are. 🙂
In this first session we are going to name the part of you that’s been turning to food, CRAVING KAREN (feel free to change the name and use a name that works for you).
CRAVING KAREN loves to urge you to eat. She lives to make you happy, safe and comfortable. The only problem, is that it’s causing you to put on weight. Yes, eating alleviates your emotional weight, but not your physical weight.
The thing to know about CRAVING KAREN is –
- She’s young – she’s between 3 – 5 years old.
- She’s loud – her voice gets louder when she feels ignored. The more she wants food, the louder she gets if you don’t give it to her.
- She doesn’t have great coping skills – she wants what she wants, when she wants it, and will have a fit if you don’t give it to her.
- She can be redirected easily.
- She has temper tantrums but they only last around 5-10 minutes.
The Emotional Eating Magic Formula™
To calm your inner dialogue that we have named, “Craving Karen” in this course, you have an opportunity to practice the Emotional Eating Magic Formula™.
Here is how the Emotional Eating Magic Formula™ works –
If Craving Karen appears this week wanting food and wanting it NOW but you are not hungry –
1. Calm Your Body – Use your breath to calm your body. Breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth 3 times.
2. Calm Your Mind – Tell yourself, “I’m okay. I’ve got this.” Then tell yourself, “I’m such an incredible and powerful adult and I have total power over Karen.”
3. Send Karen on Vacation – Karen is manipulative at times because she wants what she wants, when she wants it. She’s VERY good at persuading you to get her needs met. If and when she gets loud or shows you a food image in your mind, all you have to practice saying is this…
“Thank you for sharing Karen, why don’t you go on a wonderful and beautiful vacation, and leave my body and mind alone.”
BONUS STEP – If you feel you can do this fourth step (and you might not be able to do it all the time, which totally fine), you’re going ask yourself the following three questions:
1. “What am I craving?
2. “How else can I give it to myself?”
3. Then, see about giving yourself what it is that you came up with.
The Emotional Eating Magic Formula™ can be used –
1. Any time you have a food craving and you’re not hungry.
2. Any habit you’ve created with food that you don’t like.
3. Any time of the day you indicated in the above questions.
4. Any time you’re eating and you want to overeat, just push the food away and do this work.
Just practice and have fun with this and never beat yourself up for emotionally turning to food. Little by little you will fall in love with the magi formula and It’s simplicity for calming and reducing you emotional eating tendencies.
Session #2:
Emotional Eating Food Cravings
If you’re having specific a food craving, you may want to say “NO, Don’t have it!”
However, Craving Karen doesn’t do well with hearing “NO” because it’s punitive and you might find that when you say no to a craving, you crave it even more.
When Craving Karen hears you tell her “NO”, she can go crazy, making the desire for the food you crave even more intense. It also ignites more power around food and we want to neutralize your energy around food so your mind and cravings can relax.
This week’s lesson is about lessening this fight between your mind and your body.
Instead of fighting with Craving Karen, you have an opportunity to hear her, work with her and calm her by saying…
“YES, you really want this food. YES, you can have it. Let’s just wait until you’re hungry and then you can have it as part of our meal.”
By giving voice to the part of you that’s having a food craving, while still acknowledging her food cravings, the craving will relax and calm Craving Karen.
Here is Four Step Strategy to Stop Overeating:
Step 1. At the beginning of your meal, look at your food, take three big deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth, to center you. Bring your awareness to your meal, and take a moment to bring in gratitude to your food.
Step 2. During your meal, REALLY taste your food. You can ask yourself what your favorite tastes and textures are. Ask yourself what you like the most. Bring in more consciousness and enjoyment to your meal experience.
Step 3. About half-way through your meal at about 7 bites in, take a PAUSE. Bring your awareness to your stomach and check in. Are you getting full? Is hunger no longer present?
Give yourself the opportunity to have two more delicious bites and then either push your food away or throw a napkin over your plate. If you find that you are not full give yourself another 5 bites and then do another check in.
Step 4. Celebrate yourself each time you stop!! Yay!!! You did it. Do a happy dance 🙂
Struggling with consistency –
Are you struggling with consistency? Not making the magic formula part of your life?
If this sounds like you…
1. It’s your way of resisting caring for yourself.
2. You’re avoiding looking at this particular area of your life.
3. You’re making other people in your life more important.
The truth is that your happiness, your health, and your vitality is some of the most important work you can do right now.
Remembering to DO The Magic Formula –
* Make copies of the magic formula and put it everywhere. Place this formula on your kitchen table, stick it to your fridge, place in your car, your nightstand, your computer, your bathroom mirror or wherever you need the reinforcement until this is a habit.
* CELEBRATE – the more you celebrate when you try and get in front of craving Karen, the more you’re going to link up in your brain successfully transforming your emotional eating. That’s why I’m a big fan of starring your successes on a calendar and doing something great for yourself when you’ve sent Karen away 3 or 4 times.
Utilizing Visualization to Create Your Healthy Vibrant Self –
Imagine you are fully healed and living in a body you’re proud of. From this vantage point, please answer the following:
1. In your ideal, healthy, and beautiful body, what does it feel like to finally be at peace with food and have the body that you’ve been craving?
2. What are new activities that you are so excited to engage in, now that you can do whatever activities you crave?
3. What new activities are you excited to try out that you’ve been putting off?
4. What words and/or phrases are you now saying to yourself not that you look and feel amazing?
** This week begin doing one thing as you would if weight, emotional eating and your body wasn’t holding you back! **
Meet Your Vibrant Vivian –
There is beautiful, vibrant and healthy part of you, and for this course’s sake, I’m going to call this part of you, Vibrant Vivian. This is the part of you that is alive, vibrant, beautiful, and that has a healthy and normal relationship with food.
If the name, Vibrant Vivian, doesn’t quite feel right, please change it to something that you connect better to.
This week, your journey is to honor and connect with the vibrant and healthy part of you that’s been craving a voice, craving to be seen and craving your attention!
Today I want you to connect to her, speak to her, and make her come alive. Let her come out by the clothes you wear, the makeup you put on, the way you walk and the way you speak to yourself and to others.
I want this to become your new best friend! You so deserve it!
This Week’s Focus –
1. Connect with your vibrant Vivian
2. Start taking vibrant and healthy actions that you’ve been putting off
3. Use the Four-Step Formula for Overeating
4. Keep sending craving Karen off on vacation 🙂
The Four Step Strategy to Stop Emotionally Overeating at Meals
Step 1. At the beginning of your meal, look at your food, take three big deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth, to center you. Bring your awareness to your meal, and take a moment to bring in gratitude to your food.
Step 2. During your meal, REALLY taste your food. You can ask yourself what your favorite tastes and textures are. Ask yourself what you like the most. Bring in more consciousness and enjoyment to your meal experience.
Step 3. About half-way through your meal at about 7 bites in, take a PAUSE. Bring your awareness to your stomach and check in. Are you getting full? Is hunger no longer present?
Give yourself the opportunity to have two more delicious bites and then either push your food away or throw a napkin over your plate. If you find that you are not full give yourself another 5 bites and then do another check in.
Step 4. Celebrate yourself each time you stop!! Yay!!! You did it. Do a happy dance 🙂
Becoming More Consistent
If you’re having any difficulties with being consistent or making the Emotional Eating Magic Formula™ part of your life, then I want you to understand:
1. It’s your way of resisting taking care of yourself.
2. You might be avoiding exploring this particular area of your life.
3. You might be making other people in your life more important than you and your needs.
Your happiness, your health, and your vitality are some of the most important aspects of taking care of yourself to slim down that you can do in your life right now.
* To make doing the Magic Formula easier on you – Make copies of the magic formula and put it everywhere. Place this formula on your kitchen table, stick it to your fridge, place in your car, your nightstand, your computer, your bathroom mirror or wherever you need the reinforcement until this is a habit.
* CELEBRATE – the more you celebrate when you try and get in front of craving Karen, the more you’re going to link up in your brain successfully transforming your emotional eating. That’s why I’m a big fan of starring your successes on a calendar and doing something great for yourself when you’ve sent Karen away 3 or 4 times.
Vibrant Vivian and Visualizing Your Healthy-Vibrant Self
Imagine for a moment that you are fully healed and living in a body you’re proud of. From this vantage point, please answer the following:
1. In your ideal, healthy, and beautiful body, what does it feel like to finally be at peace with food and have the body that you’ve been craving?
2. What are new activities that you are so excited to engage in, now that you can do whatever activities you crave?
3. What new activities are you excited to try out that you’ve been putting off?
4. What words and/or phrases are you now saying to yourself not that you look and feel amazing?
** This week begin doing one thing as you would if weight, emotional eating and your body wasn’t holding you back! **
Meet Your Vibrant Vivian –
There is a beautiful, vibrant and healthy part of you. We are going to call that part of you, Vibrant Vivian. This is the part of you that is alive, vibrant, beautiful, and that has a healthy, relaxed, and normal relationship with food.
If the name, Vibrant Vivian, doesn’t quite feel right, please change it to something that feels better.
This week, your journey is to honor and connect with this part of yourself that’s been craving a voice, craving being seen, and craving your attention!
This week practice connected to her, speaking to her, and make her come alive. Let her come out and be seen with clothes that reflect this vibrance, the makeup you put on, the way you walk, and the way you speak about yourself to yourself and others.
Make Vivian your new best friend and have fun!!!
Week #2 Focus Items –
1. Connect with your vibrant Vivian
2. Start taking vibrant and healthy actions that you’ve been putting off
3. Use the Four-Step Formula for Overeating
4. Keep sending craving Karen off on vacation 🙂
Session #3:
Neuroplasticity and Creating New Behaviors
There’s been a lot of new discoveries in the past few years regarding neuroplasticity and whole-brain research. Today I’d like to take this information and utilize it for your benefit.
When it comes to healing your emotional eating through neuroplasticity, ending overeating or slimming down, there’s a powerful 4-phase system to creating new behaviors in your life.
Neuroplasticity: Your Brain’s 4-Phase System to Transforming Your Old Emotional Eating Behaviors
Phase 1. Phase one is where your old emotional eating behavior is the dominant behavior. As you begin creating and practicing a new behavior, this new behavior get loosely wired in your brain and is extremely fragile.
By sending CRAVING KAREN on vacation or activating Vivian, you’re activating a new practice. It’s still a bit fragile – so keep practicing, practicing and practicing, because…
Phase 2. Phase two is where your new patterns become wired together! Woohoo!!! This is an exciting phase. Even though this wiring isn’t fully matured and it’s breakable, your new behaviors are getting stronger.
You know you’re in phase two when you’re practicing your new skills but you find those old habits wanting to peak in here and there. You’re not fully a non-emotional-eater yet, but keep going!
Phase 3. Phase three is where myelination takes place. Myelination is a coating substance that coats and insulates your brain’s connections to make your behavior more secure. It’s like pouring glue over a flimsy wire vase to make it harden.
You know you’re in this phase when you’re engaging in your new behaviors with greater ease. You know you’re in this phase when you are experiencing fewer and fewer emotional eating episodes.
Phase 4. Phase four is where your old emotional eating behavior are massively weakened. Usually, after a year is when you can solidly say you are done with the old behaviors and you are no longer an emotional eater. The new you is here to stay!!! The important thing to know is that your old pattern never dies fully, but over times gets massively weakened.
It’s like an old phone number that you rarely use. It’s somewhere in your brain’s memory, but it gets harder to access over time.
The key in this phase is to keep doing what’s working so relapse never has a chance of coming back. Even if there’s a tiny relapse, just quickly go back and do the work you’ve learned so you can quickly keep living without emotionally turning to food!
Take good care of yourself and keep forging ahead!
Marna
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance is the source of most of suffering that occurs in our lives with our bodies and weight.
Cognitive dissonance is when your desires are out of alignment with your actions.
It’s when you want to stop emotionally eating and you just can’t seem to follow through. It’s painful to want to change your body and relationship with food and watch yourself continue to create self-sabotaging behaviors, keeping you from achieving what you desire most.
The reason you’ve experienced emotional eating in the past is that you’ve tied food to an emotional need, either consciously or unconsciously.
There are two main overarching reasons I see people gain weight and emotionally eat – one is for the need for love and the other is the need for protection.
Do either of these reasons resonate with you?What reasons do you think you’ve been emotionally turning to food for?
An Exercise to Deepen Your Understanding of Craving Karen
Please go get a piece of paper and fold it into fourths.
Now, think about a pattern of eating that is not the way you want it to be. This should be a pattern of eating, that if solved, would make a huge difference for you and your body.
1. On the top left quadrant of the page, write down the time of day that you’d like to focus on improving.
2. On the top right square of the page, write down what you believe CRAVING KAREN’s true wants and needs are.
3. In looking at Craving Karen’s emotional needs, on the bottom left quadrant, write one word that sums up Craving Karen’s main need.
4. In the last, bottom right bottom quadrant of the page, write a few possible solutions that would meet Craving Karen’s main emotional need.
5. Looking at this list, circle the options that meet your emotional and mental needs.
Your new strategy must match the emotional and energetic state during that day. If you want to numb out and relax, taking a high intensity exercise class is not going to be the energetic solution. Finding something relaxing like meditation, reading, watching TV, sipping tea, or taking a warm bath would all be better emotional and energetic matches.
High energy needs might include dancing, working out, playing with kids or grandkids, going for a hike, etc.
6. Write down what I call a love agreement with yourself utilizing an IF THEN statement….
If I Want to EAT (at night), THEN I’m going to (take a bath).
Write down your new IF THEN STATEMENT to give you some lovely direction this week.
If I ______________________, then I will ________________________.
7. Celebrate engaging in this new action. After three times you engage in your new love agreement with yourself, do something to beautify yourself and your life.
If You Find Yourself Emotionally Turning To Food…
1. Be kind to yourself and recognize your small successes along the way.
2. Treat an emotional eating episode as an isolated event. You are not broken. You do NOT have to start all over again
3. See if you can find one positive feeling – if it’s hard to access a positive feeling, look online at a cute adorable baby face or puppy, and you will immediately feel lifted up emotionally.
4. Kindly take one positive action step. This will put your brain back feeling successful and on the right path.
Session #4
Why Evenings Are More Challenging
Have you ever wondered why you feel more motivated and disciplined in the morning and then it starts to waiver as the day goes on?
Nobel Prize Winner, Daniel Kahneman, discovered that we have two types of minds:
1. The Fast/Instinctual/emotional mind – that’s the part of you that grabs food at 3pm for a pick-me-up or buys something expensive that you can’t afford. It’s the part of your mind that emotionally eats in the evening in front of the TV when you’ve told yourself a million times to stop doing it.
2. The Slow and Deliberate Mind – This is your conscious mind. This is the part of you that has no problem taking a little time to make decisions. This is the part of you that weighs and measures the benefits of purchasing something.
Kahneman discovered that the slow deliberate mind is the strongest in the morning and that people use most of their decision making power in the morning. By evening, your brain switches into its fast and instinctual mind, making your decisions in the evening more impulsive.
For anyone struggling with emotional eating, overeating, or bingeing tendencies, it’s likely to happen more often in the evenings when our fast-brain is more reactive and quick to act in ways that don’t always serve us.
The Solution: Front load your day for success to help support your fast/instinctual/emotional mind for later on in the day.
Activating Your Deliberate Mind
Today you have an opportunity to use Daniel Kahneman research to support your ability to get in front of your emotional eating patterns by front-loading your day by doing the heavy lifting with your mind earlier in the morning.
Create a new plan for this week by answering the following questions –
1. What two things could you do in the morning to make food preparation easier for you in the evening?
2. What two things could you do to make your chores more fun in the evening?
- watching tv while folding laundry
- listen to comedy while walking the dog
- pay bills while burning incense
- Other ideas –
3. If you have someone at home with you, what is one thing you could ask for assistance with?
- Ask the kids to help you make dinner
- Ask your husband to stop bringing food up to bed
- Ask your partner to help you create a new pattern like bringing you up some tea or lemon water at night
- Other ideas –
4. What are 2-3 things you could do to make your evenings meals easier and healthier for you?
- Crock pot meals
- Chopping up healthy foods during the weekends
- Defrosting food
- Having fruit or tea or lemon water prepared for you or setup to go in your kettle ready to be warmed up.
- Other ideas –
5. Now, circle two answers you wrote down, that would make the biggest difference in your week.
6. Next, get out your calendar and put a reminder in your calendar with this new success action item to remind you daily so that you can get in a habit of front loading your day to be more successful.
Don’t WAIT – Please do it RIGHT now!!!! Put reminders in your phone, sticky note reminders, schedule it in and make it happen!
What Do I Need Technique
You may notice that even though you are making great strides through this course, you still might have some emotional urges that come out of nowhere leading you to turn to food.
One of the most powerful and effective ways of addressing urges and emotional eating episodes, is to use the tool of curiosity.
My favorite strategy to help you get curious about your emotional eating and explore the heart of your true needs that have nothing to do with food, is through my What Do I Need Technique™. This technique has been extremely effective in helping hundreds of clients of mind over the past two decades accelerate their weight loss and lessen their emotional eating patterns when they are not hungry but crave food.
First you want to get out a piece of paper, sit down and then answer the following…
What Do I Need Technique –
1. What is going on? What is the situation?
2. What am I feeling about this situation right now?
3. If that feeling had a mouth, what would it say it needs?
4. What could I do now (or within 12 hours) to reduce my pain around this?
5. Is this something I need to ask for help around? If Yes, who can help me?
6. Is this something I need some accountability around? If Yes, who or how can I build in accountability?
7. Is there something that I can do to ensure I’ll be more successful this week?
This is an incredibly powerful tool when you use it Try it out
and you will quickly see what I mean!
To print this technique out, click HERE.