Emotional Eaters: Who We Are

For years I felt so much shame and guilt around being an emotional eater. Yet, that is just it. Emotional eaters tend to take on the weight of the world and feel more responsible than not. Did you get that? The weight of the world.

The problem with emotional eating is when we gain extra weight and the impact that weight, or eating toxic foods, can have on our health, self-esteem and emotional worlds.

First, a bit about emotional eaters. We typically put others way before ourselves. We can tend to overextend ourselves, over-worry and/or overdo. While I’m not sure which came first, the over-doing or the overeating, I am sure that we are very dedicated, highly empathic and deeply caring individuals. Sometimes, to our own detriment.

When I was a teen, my mom gave me a quote on a card that really impacted me. It read, “Do not grow a wishbone daughter, where a backbone aught to be.” Meaning, do not continue to seek for the answers outside of yourself. We can wish we would stop overdoing it, we can wish our lives not to be stressful, but until we grow the backbone and step into our power, we may get trampled on.

Emotional eaters are actually very strong deep down. Emotional eating is like a trumpet call that it is time to put on the brakes and get real with ourselves. We are so caring, yet we beat ourselves up. We are so deeply moved by things that it is sometimes scary. This applies equally to fear of success.

Some emotional eaters will turn more inward, while others will push forward into the world with “umph”. Yet, both are equally experiencing an inner yearning. This inner yearning, somewhere along the way, we began to cover with food.

The good news is that because we are so deeply caring, we can turn this around on ourselves and use self-care to our advantage in major ways. You know the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, here is the Golden Rule for the emotional eater:

I do unto myself, as I would do unto another.