{"id":73,"date":"2011-01-13T17:42:33","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T17:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/?p=73"},"modified":"2011-02-07T18:55:25","modified_gmt":"2011-02-07T18:55:25","slug":"non-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/non-eating\/","title":{"rendered":"How \u201cNon-eating\u201d Beliefs Cause Emotional Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A session with an emotional eating<\/a> client today made it very clear how beliefs that had nothing directly to do with eating, weight, or food ultimately could lead to an overeating problem.<\/p>\n

The client had de-conditioned eating when any one of about 20 triggers were present and she had eliminated about 10 beliefs about eating and food.\u00a0 And yet she still continued to eat when she wasn\u2019t hungry.<\/p>\n

I asked her to look carefully at the moment when she realizes she is no longer hungry (after eating) and tell me what she wants to get from eating more food. What does she really<\/strong> want when she thinks she wants to eat?<\/p>\n

Eating to get intimacy<\/strong><\/p>\n

She was quiet for at least two full minutes and then she said, as she started to cry, \u201cTwo things.\u00a0 First eating gives me a sense of being loved and a sense of intimacy.\u00a0 I feel I need to connect with someone or something.\u00a0 And, second, eating gives me a sense of security, reassurance, feeling safe and secure, a sense that it\u2019s all okay.<\/p>\n

She had told me earlier in the session that she was very unhappy and felt her life was not what she wanted it to be.\u00a0 She spoke of frequently feeling depressed and anxious.<\/p>\n

Can you see that she was eating solely for emotional reasons: to get the sense of love and connection and to get a sense everything is okay\u2014as a way to make herself feel better and to distract herself from the constant feeling that her life is not okay?<\/strong><\/p>\n

So the first thing we did was de-condition eating as the vehicle she used to get a pleasurable distraction from the negative feelings that pervade her life.<\/p>\n

At that point she said she could imagine finishing a meal, feeling full, and not still want to eat more\u2014something she had said earlier in the session she couldn\u2019t imagine at all.<\/p>\n

“Food doesn’t reject me”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then we took a look to see why she chose eating to get a sense of intimacy and connection and to get a sense of security, rather than relationships.\u00a0 A comment she made earlier in the session was the clue: \u201cFood doesn\u2019t reject me.\u201d<\/p>\n

When I asked her what she meant by that, she came out with several beliefs without even realizing it: People can\u2019t be trusted.\u00a0 People will reject me.\u00a0 My relationships won\u2019t last.\u00a0 People will abandon me. <\/em>These beliefs had nothing directly to do with eating and food, but they were responsible for her not being able to have intimate relationships.\u00a0 At which point eating appeared to be the only alternative.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Given those beliefs, she couldn\u2019t turn to people to get what she needed, and because food seemed to give it to her, eating became a conditioned response whenever she wanted to numb her feelings of unhappiness and feel, instead, connected and secure.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In our next session I plan to help her eliminate these and any other beliefs that prevent her from using people to get the intimacy, connection, and security she needs.\u00a0 Now that she is no longer conditioned to eat when she has those needs (which is almost all the time), eliminating the beliefs will open up the possibility for intimate relationships.<\/p>\n

Then in later sessions we will find and eliminate the beliefs and conditionings that are causing the unhappiness, depression, and anxiety\u2014which is the ultimate source of her emotional eating problem.<\/p>\n

For my free eBook, The Secret to Ending Overeating For Good<\/em>, go to http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 Morty Lefkoe 2011<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A session with an emotional eating client today made it very clear how beliefs that had nothing directly to do with eating, weight, or food ultimately could lead to an overeating problem. The client had de-conditioned eating when any one of about 20 triggers were present and she had eliminated about 10 beliefs about eating … Continue reading “How \u201cNon-eating\u201d Beliefs Cause Emotional Eating”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/emotionaleatingreport.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}