Anyone want to kick emotional eating with me? (Or give advice on what worked for you?)

[SlurpinCoffee]

Hi everyone,

34 years old, weight has gone up and down since I was around 10 years old. Have finally admitted to myself I have a real mental issue with food (I likely knew deep down but convinced myself otherwise - I can lose weight I'm just not trying etc.) I'm finally admitting I do not have it under control at all.

I have a 2.5 year old DS and a 6 week old DS and something has just clicked for me. I HAVE to do something about this. I need to be around for them for as long as possible, and I want to spend their childhood actually playing with them. I'm so overweight, and I've added another 4kg since having DS2 which isn't shifting. I can't even admit here how much weight in total I have to lose...I'm so embarrassed.

I've been thinking a lot recently about my eating. I've been realising I do emotionally eat. But not just negatively. I eat when I'm happy too. A nice day out? Let's get coffee and cake! Let's order takeaway at home. Bad day? Order a takeaway. Eat a pack of biscuits. and so on.
I want to kick this. I feel I need to sort my head before I can sort my weight (emotional before physical).

Ironically, I love hiking, I love ice skating, I'd love to do a martial art and I'd love to rollerblade. I love football too. But my weight stops me doing most of it. I went hiking with DH and then together with ds1, not often due to COVID and pregnancy, but I can manage 3 hours when we do go. I went to get back into this from the summer onwards. Martial arts, ice skating, rollerblading, I'm too embarrassed. So I feel I'm stuck in a vicious cycle. I need to do sport to lose weight but I'm too embarrassed to do it cause of my weight!

I was hoping to use this thread as a support thread / outlet for when the need to emotionally eat kicks in. And keep talking about it / and exploring why I do this so that I can stop it.

If anyone wants to join please feel free. Chat about whatever you need and if you've managed to kick emotional eating, I'd welcome any tips.

Hi, I'm an emotional eater as well.

I have listened to a few podcast episodes by Lisa Schlosberg - she focuses on emotional eating and body image and related things. She has a programme for weight loss but it is very expensive, so I haven't done it. But listening to the podcast sometimes helps me think about things.

I am losing weight at the moment. I've lost between 5 and 6 kg so far this year, which I'm quite happy with as a nice steady pace. The method I'm following is from Corinne Crabtree. I saw an advert for her on Facebook and googled her. Again she has a paid for thing but I haven't done that. She has a 3 step method which is free to access and it seems to be working for me so far. She has a podcast as well - isn't as helpful from the perspective of emotional eating but I still find it helpful.

@ScottishBeth thanks very much for the podcast recommendation. I'll have a listen when cooking dinner sometime this week. It's good to know they help you think about things as that's what I'm after really. Processing and reflecting.

That's a great weight loss so far, well done! I think slow and steady is the best way long term so that's also how I want to approach this.

Well today, I woke up and thought "ahh it's Sunday, my mum is visiting (I'm a Brit living in the EU) DH isn't at work, it's snowing outside... How nice would it be to cosy up with a film on the sofa, watch a movie and order a McDonald's!"
I recognised it and stopped myself. I asked myself why do I think we need to order one? I thought about the feelings I had when thinking of it and I was associating it with sending some relaxing cosy time together. So I didn't say anything to anyone about ordering food and every time my brain went to ordering, I veered away from it by focusing on what I was really doing for lunch here at home. And I managed! This is a good step for me as last month, we would've had McDonald's for lunch.

I also opened up to DH yesterday. Told him I've been reflecting and realising my issue and he gently said he does recognise when I have a bad day, I go straight to takeaways, and I've been using biscuits to keep me going right now (although I presume part of that is a 6 week old baby and breastfeeding 😅, I'm still definitely eating far too many biscuits for the circumstances so the next thing is to curb the biscuit binge eating). I've asked DH to help me and support me by pointing it out if I go to takeaway / biscuit binge again.
Going to keep noting down trigger foods this week.

@SlurpinCoffee resurfacing an old thread to see how you are doing with your plans? Your thread popped up as I searched about emotional eating! And I can completely relate to your post