Powerful strategy to start shifting your relationship with food TODAY
“Sometimes it’s the smallest decisions that can change your life forever.”
Keri Russell
If you have been following my previous blogs, perhaps you have realized that I stress the importance of promoting self-awareness, that is, self-understanding and self-knowledge regarding any area of our lives that we may be interested in making a shift or a change. Thus, deepening our understanding in relationship to our dynamics around food can help us feel more empowered, more clear, eventually more equipped to choose a different path in relationship to food.
Insight or action?
Although my emphasis is in self-awareness as a key first step toward shifting our relationship with food, from time to time I find it useful to present abstract ideas in more concrete, ways, such as in the form of tips, tools, suggestions, and strategies. After all, we can benefit from practical systems that we can readily implement to tackle our relationship with food for good.
So, in today’s blog I am going to do just that. I am going to discuss a system that delineates 5 steps aimed at better understanding our dynamics around food and then allowing that new understanding to inform our future behaviors, actions, or choices.
We can all be P.R.O.U.D about our eating!
That’s it!—I hope that this easy to remember acronym will help you adopt it and put it into practice in your own life— it goes like this:
The next time that you are about to eat something (and you kind of feel there is an emotional motivation behind your eating), I invite you to consider doing this:
P =>Pause
R =>Reflect
O =>Observe
U =>Utilize/ Use
D =>Direct
We can all be P.R.O.U.D.
about our eating!
P =>Pause
R =>Reflect
O =>Observe
U =>Utilize/ Use
D =>Direct
Step 1
P = Pause. It may come as no surprise that the first step relates in one way or another to pausing, or at least slowing down, kind of putting the slow-motion setting on our thoughts and behaviors. By this I mean that the moment that I realize I am heading to the kitchen, or to the store, or to the drive through, or to my purse to reach for food or when we start feeling that unsettled feeling or sensation inside, when thoughts about food come to our mind, we want to tap into two qualities in yourself—
Acceptance and Presence
First, we want to exude acceptance, always. There is no place for judgment here. There is place for curiosity and openness, a wanting to know more, a wanting to better understand the role that food plays in our lives. With that kind of stance. So, it is never about putting ourselves down, as that would take away from the type of energy we want for this practice. So, with acceptance and caring, we tap onto this second quality, that is presence. The key words here that correspond to these two qualities we want to call upon are: with acceptance and being present. We can even take a few deep breaths to signify the start of a mindset shift.
To recap, we have noticed thoughts about wanting to eat and the beginnings of taking action toward emotional eating (that is eating not because our body needs to replenish its source of energy but for any other reason). We chose to slow down, to Pause, to buy time, to experience the next several minutes in slow motion. And we called into two qualities we can tap in ourselves: acceptance of all feelings, thoughts, urges, and desires related to food and present to our experience. Mindfully.
So we are going from action oriented (let’s eat) to awareness oriented (let’s understand first).
Step 2
R = Reflect. We embark into reflecting on what is my intention with the food that I want to eat right now? What is my purpose with eating now? What am I feeling now? How do I imagine I would feel after I eat? What feelings would be decreased? What feelings would be augmented? Would I feel less of something painful? More of something good? Am I escaping from any feelings? Am I unintentionally running away from an emotional state, and we know that food will help us feel less?
We can always eat afterwards..
if that is what we decide to do. So there is no need to sense deprivation, you are not taking away food from yourself. You are not depriving yourself form food as a coping mechanism.
You are giving yourself an opportunity to get your power back for a few moments and not be “tricked” into thinking that food is your only choice right now to manage, navigate, administer what you are experiencing. Food is one coping mechanism. One avenue. Food would always be there. You can always come back for food later if nothing else strikes a chord for you.
But today you are experimenting..
with deepening your awareness. With reflecting on the role, the function, the purpose that eating in this moment will have, or you think will have, for you. Can we infuse this moment with reflection? Can we go from mindlessly eating to intentionally making a space for what would come up if I were to not emotionally eat in this very moment?
Am I stuffing my feelings with food? Are these specific feelings I am feeling especially hard for me to tolerate? Would eating put them to “sleep” or numb them for a bit? This is a common experience for those of us who intentionally or unintentionally rely on food to cope. I want to stress again. You are not doing something wrong. Let’s bring awareness to our actions and ask ourselves these questions that at the core get at why are we eating right now? So this is the Reflection piece.
Step 3
O = Observe. The “Observe” piece in this context is forward looking. The “Reflect” piece was looking at what was going on for you internally in that very moment or looking back even to a few minutes or hours before (how had I been feeling that I am wanting to eat more than what my body needs?). “Observe,” in contrast, is looking at what we can predict will happen in the next minutes or hours in the different paths I may be able to choose from.
If we simplify, there are probably three paths—
PATH 1 is to eat as we used to, not being especially mindful of what we are doing, driven by a conscious or unconscious impulse to alter somewhat the way we feel. In this path we probably eat until we feel less of what we had been feeling (until our sadness, anxiety, angst, loneliness, etc.) feels less strong, until we start feeling somewhat differently, or until we have no more room whatsoever to continue eating.
PATH 2 is to mindfully be present to the cycle of emotional eating we are being a part of— “I was feeling X, not a pleasant feeling, and I am thinking about eating something, it just sounds like an appealing thing to do”. This path would probably entail still eating something, but actively deciding what and how much we are going to eat. Not leaving it to chance, instinct, or an impulse. Allowing your critical thinking combined with your deeper awareness of these dynamics to make a decision of what and how much you’ll eat. Can I prepare for myself a meal or a snack that is filling and tasty? Is that even possible? If I could put some time and effort, it likely is. Can I make that time? Or can I plan and prepare in advance to have food that would be both appealing and healthy for next time I experience something like this?
PATH 3 is to realize that “what I am hungry for” (to play with Deepak Chopra’s book title) is not food, it is not necessarily food. It was never food (when I am eating in this context, driven NOT by a need to replenish my source of energy but rather to cope or manage emotional states). So, if I don’t need food, if I am aware that what food usually does is to help me shift in the short term how I am feeling.. what is it that I need? What can I substitute food for? (again, in this particular context of emotional eating—of course we want you to eat and nourish yourself appropriately to fulfill all your nutritional needs).
Perhaps I need a hug
But perhaps the person that I need I hug from cannot hug me right now. They are at work. Or they live in another country. Or perhaps they passed away. Can I imagine and to some extent feel the warmth of the hug in my mind and body? Perhaps I need to pamper myself. I am feeling overworked, spread too thin, between work, the kids (or family in general), that there’s no time for me? And on top of everything else, we may feel guilty when we take some time for ourselves.
Perhaps I want to go get a massage. And you can say—I don’t have that kind of money. Fair. If getting a massage is something that is delightful for you, can we make it a regular part of your self-care? Perhaps it cannot be every time you would want to get a massage but it can be, perhaps, a monthly splurge that we save up for, to have it done monthly or every other month.
Or perhaps it is not a massage for you. It is a walk alone at the beach or in the park. And I can almost hear yourself saying—who has time for that?? And that is fine. I hear you. No, as a busy woman there is often the perception that there is not time left for us after we have given it (almost) all between work and home life. But perhaps that is something we can plan for. And I completely understand that having a self-care plan will not in the moment that we are having a craving make us feel better, but it can be something that we fall back upon, something that we can hold in our minds to remind us that there is relief & replenishment coming our way with these activities that we have committed to doing for ourselves.
Again, my massage or time in nature scheduled for next week will not help me soothe or cope in the moment with the emotion we have been trying to shift away from but having a plan for a menu of self-care options can be helpful as it broadens our horizons of things that we can do to feel alive and empowered. It can give us the sense that we are putting ourselves first and tending to our needs. A long bath with soft music and candles may be something we can do today that brings us out of that loop of feeling that only food can help in the moment. And again, we can always pair this with a favorite drink or food that is aligned with how you want to eat.
Steps 4 and 5
U = Utilize or Use and D = Direct your behavior. I will discuss these two last steps together because they go hand in hand. Think of them as a bundle if you will.
All the reflection and observation you have done in the previous steps we want now to reap those benefits! We want to put it to good use! Let’s use our hard work of reflecting and observing to inform the actions that we are going to take. Let us mindfully make conscious choices rooted on reflection and deeper self-awareness. If you are reading this, you likely are interested in relating to food differently. So bringing presence and intentionality to your actions around food is key.
Stepping out of the Emotional Eating cycle
Being mindful (present and aware in a nonjudgmental way) of our dynamics around food is key to step away from the impulse-driven cycle of emotional eating. It has the potential to allow us to enjoy food more because, when, after a hard day, I decide to eat the ice-cream (and the key word here is decide), it feels good. It is not impulse driven. It is a conscious decision on my part to, even if I do not “need it to nourish by body,” I want in that moment to allow myself to rely on eating something super tasty as a way to navigate my emotions.
When done this way, emotional eating is less likely to be a problem because, with all this thinking and reflecting, most of us will often see other possibilities that combine yes perhaps some food but also additional, new, refreshing ways of coping as well.
We can feel we deserve devoting the time, energy, and money in ourselves (at least sometimes) to help us navigate certain emotions. And when we outwardly decide, yes, today I am eating the hamburger with fries (or whatever that is for you) it is not instinct driving our actions any more. It is not impulse-driven. And we will likely eat this with a different level of presence and mindfulness and even enjoyment.
As a recap, I invite you to practice this P.R.O.U.D reflection when you can tell emotional eating wants to creep in. It can help us be present and look at our dynamics with food with fresh eyes, which may well lead to new choices.
Take the quiz to begin your journey!
It will help you identify your main emotional eating triggers as well as provide opportunities for insights, resources, and tips to come your way. See you there!
What is your #1 emotional eating trigger?
With love and conviction that the way you want to relate with food is absolutely possible and waiting for you.
Claudia