Body Image & Emotional Eating_Final
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>> Hello there.
Great to be with you again today
as we round out this module
by connecting body image with emotional eating.
Now yes,
this is a huge topic with many intertwining factors.
We are here to provide you with some jumping off points
that can help inform your work with clients,
and we want to give you plenty of opportunities
to practice applying this material
so that you feel better prepared to coach.
As an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach,
you can support clients
in exploring bio-individual connections
between body image and emotional eating habits.
Many people struggle with body image
and develop harmful relationships with food
in their attempts to conform to a perceived ideal.
However, as we discussed earlier, ideal is subjective.
As a coach, you can help your clients
view the ideal through a bio-individual lens
and encourage them to focus on the continual journey
of moving toward greater health and happiness
rather than focusing on a rigid end point.
Okay, let's get started with today's focus,
the connection between body image and emotional eating.
Here's a quick example to start us off.
Imagine you're working with a man named Greg.
Greg is in his late 30s and he hates his "fat belly."
He expresses a lot of anger about his body,
he shares that he feels so self-conscious
that he stopped exercising
because he doesn't feel comfortable
wearing workout clothes.
He also stopped coaching his daughter's softball team
because he feels like he doesn't fit in
with the other "fit" dads
who he feels he should look better than
because he is younger than most of them.
He is less motivated to be intimate with his wife
because he is ashamed of her seeing him like this.
Greg says that losing weight is his new project
and believes that getting his food under control
is the key to happiness.
He is willing to do whatever it takes.
However, he's had zero luck with diets
consisting of things like egg whites and protein shakes
because he hates that food.
He gets bored and frustrated
and ends up eating burgers and fries to feel better.
Does Greg remind you of anyone you know?
Someone who seems to always be in a battle
against his or her body?
Or someone whose body image moves them
away from health and happiness?
In the handouts for this module,
you will be able to use Greg's story
to practice applying this lecture's material,
so we'll revisit him there later on.
Regardless of gender or age,
we can fall into a trap of trying
to keep up with the Joneses.
We might use food as a way of fitting
into a non-existent ideal,
and when that doesn't work,
we can become our own worst enemies.
Self-confidence and body image plummet
and take our sense of empowerment with them.
So what do we do?
We turn to food to help us cope
and end up in an emotional eating cycle.
In this lecture, we're going to explore
how an unhelpful body image can drive emotional eating
and how emotional eating in turn
can fuel an unhelpful body image
via mechanisms of disconnection.
We'll start with self-connection.
Here are five ways an unhelpful body image
can disconnect us from ourselves
viewed through the lens of emotional eating.
Again, these are brief introductions
to a multi-layered problem.
We'll provide opportunities for you to reflect on them more
in the handouts and skill building activities.
An unhelpful body image can disconnect us from our bodies.
When we constantly judge our bodies,
we end up in a constant battle against them.
In this battle, forget about actually listening to them,
we adhere to external norms
or rules in our attempts to reach an unattainable ideal.
We are so focused on what we perceive
as negative about our bodies
that we try to disconnect from them as much as possible.
Disconnecting from them
allows us to think about them objectively
as something that we can change or conquer.
Viewing the body through this lens, the body isn't wise,
it's the enemy or at the very least,
it's imperfect and in need of improvement.
Does that make sense?
Recall that emotional eating is automatic and unthinking.
We engage in it when we want to numb or leave ourselves.
As such, it disconnects us
from the body's true hunger signals,
often leading to overeating or under-eating
or eating foods that just don't satisfy the body.
We become disconnected from the body's needs.
An unhelpful body image can disconnect us from intuition.
As we discussed,
messages we receive from culture and media
can impact body image, often for the worse.
Constant exposure to these external messages
of how we should be or how we could be better
can disconnect us from internal messages
like our own intuition and gut feelings.
As a result, it leads us away from self-trust.
As Joshua puts it,
we live in an expert-knows-best world
that leaves little room for bio-individuality.
We're not the best experts on ourselves,
otherwise, we would be our ideal selves already, right?
We need help because we can't be trusted.
It's a one-size-fits-all world
and we just can't manage to fit in.
These are some of the ways
in which your clients might struggle
that no one else may be taking the time
to acknowledge or validate for them.
Eating based on rules or what and how we should eat
disconnects us from our gut instinct
and the ability to develop self-nourishing eating habits.
If we eat based on our mind's logic,
we aren't tuning in and trusting our natural instincts.
Relating this to body image,
eating emotionally to help us cope with the stress
caused by an unhelpful body image
keeps us stuck in that unhelpful body image.
When we do this,
we're attempting to distract ourselves
from this unacceptable person we think we are
instead of practicing self-acceptance.
An unhelpful body image can disconnect us
from personal values and primary food.
The distress caused by body image can take over our lives.
When we are so focused on changing ourselves,
when we spend so much energy
on fighting the fight against our bodies,
we might have little energy left for anything else in life
like values and primary food,
relationships, career, spirituality,
and even physical activity.
We disconnect from things that add meaning
and create a sense of belonging,
which is often what we're ultimately trying
to achieve in the first place.
Recall that emotional eating
is often a way to cope with difficult emotions
by not letting ourselves feel them.
Also recall that emotions provide us
with important information,
including what matters to us,
you know, our values.
We get so stuck in the urgent need
to satisfy our cravings and eliminate distress
that it becomes impossible to look beyond the moment.
When we eat based on emotions,
we ignore other areas of life
that fulfill us in ways that food can't.
It can disconnect us from other areas of life
that have the potential
to increase our feelings of self-worth.
Eating based on self-worth
can also disconnect us from what we actually enjoy
when it comes to eating.
A body image that distresses us
and in turn motivates emotional eating
in order to cope with that distress
disconnects us from those things in our lives
that can relieve suffering.
It's ironic, don't you think?
An unhelpful body image can disconnect us from our power.
Radical acceptance is an important part of emotional healing
because it helps us reclaim our personal power.
It helps end the fight against emotions.
Only through acceptance
can we begin to heal and work with those emotions.
The same goes for body image.
Lack of self-acceptance can disempower and keep us stuck.
We don't trust our bodies, we don't trust our intuition,
and sometimes we don't even trust what's in the mirror.
All we know is that we aren't good enough
because we don't fit into some kind of ideal.
We then turn against ourselves by judging
and sometimes by using food to help us
cope with the distress we cause ourselves.
As a result, we can stay stuck in negative stress
and emotional eating cycles.
Eating how we should eat
in order to fit into a norm or ideal
disconnects us from the power of choice,
it also often creates more stress
which can lead to more maladaptive coping strategies,
including emotional eating.
Feelings of powerlessness, body image struggles,
and eating disturbances can all intersect.
Viewing our bodies through an external lens,
as we discussed before,
can create feelings of powerlessness.
We become our own worst critics
and we turn to food for comfort, for distraction,
or as a means of asserting control.
Focusing on self-should leads us away from self-care.
And finally, the last point in today's lecture is
an unhelpful body image can disconnect us from others.
More irony.
We try to fit in because we don't feel like
we're good enough
but we end up disconnecting from others.
Think about the last time
you didn't feel good about yourself physically.
Did being around other people sound great
or did you feel like isolating?
Struggling with body image
often correlates with feelings of sadness,
anxiety, guilt, shame, worry, self-criticism,
and powerlessness.
It can make us feel insecure, unattractive,
and not as good as others, which leads to isolation.
Emotional eating can also isolate.
It might include eating alone, eating in secret,
or hiding packaging
because you feel ashamed of what you're eating.
We often eat emotionally in order to cope with distress,
but as we've already discussed,
emotional eating can create more distress.
To review, an unhelpful body image
can drive emotional eating
and emotional eating can fuel an unhelpful body image.
Both can contribute to disconnection from
the body, intuition,
personal values and primary food,
personal power, and other people.
Struggling with body image is part of the human condition.
We constantly compare ourselves to others.
It's normal.
Unfortunately, the media takes advantage of this
by constantly trying to sell us
ways of bettering ourselves.
To practice this material this week, imagine that Greg,
who we introduced earlier, is your client.
Brainstorm in your journal some possible paths
you could take as an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach
using these five disconnections as a guide.
We've included more details
to guide you in the Skill Building Activities section
of your Learning Center.
Then choose one of your answers
to send out to the Facebook group and challenge yourself
to keep the conversation active with your course mates.
How can you help each other
view the material in different ways?
Be creative.
Maybe you can add more information to Greg's story.
This is great practice for working with real clients.
Take a look at the handouts,
share this information with someone in your life,
and I'll see you again soon.