Episode 64: The One About: Coping with your emotions with kindness
“[When you’re trying to figure out if you’re emotionally eating] something that needs to be addressed is making sure you are nourishing yourself adequately… and adequately in terms of what your body needs and not in terms of what society has to say because that’s usually not enough.” - Mimi Cole
In this week’s episode, Hannah and Ali talk all things Intuitive Eating principle #7: Cope with Your Emotions. Learning to validate and cope with your emotions can be a very important step in the process of Intuitive Eating which is why Mimi Cole was the perfect guest for this week’s episode. Mimi is a 2nd year graduate student in the Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counselling program at The University of North Carolina and co-host of The Lovely Becoming podcast. On her podcast, Mimi interviews mental health and eating disorders practitioners from all over to discuss topics related to Intuitive Eating, systems of oppression, anti-fat bias and much more so there was no question Hannah and Ali had to have her on this episode to answer all your questions about emotional eating and coping with your feelings.
How can I just rely on physical hunger to guide my food choices?
How do you break the vicious cycle of emotional eating?
Is it wrong to eat for boredom?
Is it ever okay to eat for emotions?
How do I stop using food as punishment when I feel I have made a mistake with my eating?
What do you think about using food or treats as a reward?
How do I break the cycle of using food as a motivation?
Emotional eating is a topic that diet culture likes to use to create guilt and shame around choices to eat. Human beings eat for a variety of reasons including for pleasure, joy, comfort, nurturing, excitement, celebration, and many more including nutrients. The diet world wants you to believe that the only permissible reason to eat is physical hunger and eating in response to anything apart from hunger cues is wrong. Hannah, Ali and Mimi are here to call B.S. on this harmful rhetoric and help to support you in your journey of learning to cope with your emotions while remembering there are no conditions on “unconditional permission”.