The 5 Stages of Awareness: A Mindful Approach to Heal Emotional Eating

Emotional awareness adds tremendous value to life as it creates a rich experience of the totality of being alive. Understanding the inner workings of your mind, your heart, and your spirit requires an ability to feel and understand the depth and breadth of your emotions: all of your emotions. However, many people spend a lot of time unconsciously avoiding their emotions. Why is this? Because as human beings we tend to seek comfort and avoid discomfort.

Emotions are an incredibly valuable element of being a human, of being alive. They are a response to our experiences, environments, relationships, and our lives as a whole. If you have been avoiding experiencing your emotions for some time, or using food as an escape from your emotions, this may seem like a daunting task: to learn to be present with and feel your emotions. Working with the five stages of awareness allows you to experience your emotions and grow in your emotional awareness and well-being. Over time, you will create a sense of being more grounded, comfortable with, and grateful for the wholeness of your being.

When you embark on this process, you will stop trying to escape your emotions. Many people use food to avoid emotions and find only temporary comfort from the discomfort of their emotions. This leads to mindless eating, over eating, poor body image, and disordered eating.

When you numb yourself with food to avoid an uncomfortable emotion, you are setting yourself up for more discomfort internally. The emotions don’t just go away.  When food is the temporary solution to your problems, food then becomes a problem, leaving you stuck in a vicious, dangerous cycle. Use these five stages of awareness to break the cycle and begin experiencing your emotions. Allow yourself to begin the journey into some of the darker places within, in order to experience the fullness of your light. As Dr. Kelly Brogan says, “You have to walk through the wound.”

The foundation for the five stages of awareness is mindfulness. It is about experiencing your life, your emotions, and really being present for whatever is true right now. Mindfulness is paying attention from moment to moment with a nonjudgmental awareness. That means you are present with whatever arises in the moment. When you are present, you don’t run from whatever arises, you don’t resist it, you don’t numb it out. This numbing may protect you temporarily from discomfort, but it limits your experience of your deep internal world and can end up numbing out all emotions, the pleasant and more desirable ones as well. Here are the five stages of awareness:

1.    Mindful moment

By giving yourself a mindful moment each and every day you will connect with what is true in this moment. The mind may try to run from it, resist it and search for distractions. However, with practice, this process becomes more and more comfortable and leads to acceptance and peace. This is a moment of quiet reflection where you can just be.

2.    Recognize and name your emotion

Notice an emotion as it arises in the present moment and how it impacts your thoughts. Name it, not to judge it, but to understand it and to connect with it. Practice being aware, notice what is present without getting on the roller coaster of your thoughts and feelings. Notice the impact of the emotion on your physical body. This experience may be pleasant (happiness often comes with a feeling of warmth internally) and some may be unpleasant (anxiety often comes with increased heartbeat, muscular tension and shallow breathing). Notice your tendency to want to avoid or grasp onto the emotion and try to stay present with it.

3.    Create a non-judgmental awareness through observing the emotion

Here, you practice simply noticing and observing the emotion as if you are a witness to it. You are observing the emotions and working to release any judgment of your response to it. Judgements such as, happy (good) and anxiety (bad), are not useful in the process of witnessing and accepting emotions. Rather, you are now simply noticing the emotion and then sitting with it from the witness/silent observer perspective. Remain in the witness perspective for about 1-5 minutes. Set a timer, notice the mind’s desire to avoid, distract and move away from the emotion. Try not to judge that experience knowing that this process is challenging and takes time, effort, determination, and focus.

4.    Gather the information the emotion is providing you

In this stage you are tuning into the information the emotion is providing you. Understanding the emotion is useful wisdom regarding your internal experience. Allowing yourself to understand why you had the emotion in the first place will create an opportunity to choose how to respond to the emotion. Emotions are information about our experience of the present moment. For example, if I am happy, why? If I am anxious, why? This is extremely valuable information about our experiences. Understanding the why behind your emotions offers the opportunity to make a decision about how to respond. If I am anxious because I am worrying about something I cannot control, that is not useful. If it is something I may be able to control, how could I cope in more effective way or take action? When you understand what the emotion is trying to communicate to you, you become more self-aware. This creates freedom to be more comfortable with your emotions, the depths of your being, with your true self.

5.    Witness it and let it go

The final stage of emotional awareness is to let it go. Release the emotion. Often what is feared is that an emotion will bring you down, will take over, or will be unbearable. However, emotional awareness brings just the opposite, it lifts you up to know that it can be released. As you learn to let it go, you will feel more grounded in your being. As you understand, manage and cope with your emotions, you will become more comfortable feeling them, to let them go and move forward.

Begin integrating these stages of emotional awareness into your daily routine and notice the impact. When you allow yourself the freedom to experience your emotions you no longer seek out the comfort of escaping with food. When food becomes a facet of life that is pleasurable, nourishing and life enhancing rather than a battle internally, you will make peace with food through the process of making peace with your emotions and yourself.

How to Manage Emotional Food Cravings Along Your Path to Making Peace with Food

We all have food cravings. You know, that feeling where you just want something sweet, or salty or crunchy, or maybe all three in one! But why do we have these cravings and what can we do about them? Occasional food cravings are normal, however if you struggle with emotional eating, the cravings may be emotionally driven. It is vital to become emotionally aware in order to differentiate what type of craving your are experiencing. This will allow you to make a conscious choice in the moment of a craving. 

A general food craving is a message from your body. It may be trying to send you the message that you are dehydrated, that you have a nutritional deficiency, or that your energy dip may be related to a blood sugar imbalance. These are all really useful messages that are important to notice. When you truly listen to your body, you receive and understand these messages with clarity. A general food craving may also indicate that your daily diet is boring, uninspired, dull in flavor and lacking in a wide range of nutrients. The good news is, you can do something about all of this!

An emotional craving is different. An emotional craving is due to experiencing an emotion and not wanting to be present with it. There is a big difference. If you are experiencing a general food craving, you might be satisfied by having a small amount of what you are craving or a healthier version of what you are craving. With an emotional craving, this is often not the case as the food serves to numb the emotion only temporarily.

An emotional craving is far more difficult to manage and can lead to mindless overeating, weight gain and negative feelings about yourself and your body. The challenge is to begin to allow yourself to experience your emotions and have an alternative behavior aside from eating in order to manage your emotions.

When emotional eating has become deeply engrained as a behavior and your primary go-to coping skill to manage your emotions, it can take a long time to effectively manage and change it. If emotional cravings that lead to emotional eating do not become managed, it can lead to eating disorders, depression, anxiety and a low self-esteem.

Here are some examples of common emotional cravings:

• When you are feeling lonely, food will be your friend and keep you company.

• When you are feeling anxious, food helps to calm you down and temporarily occupy your mind.

• When you are feeling sad, food becomes your comfort.

• When you are feeling bored, food gives you something to do with your time.

• When you are feeling down, food becomes your pleasure.

One strategy to begin to understand what may be driving your food cravings is keeping an emotional cravings journal. This is a place to write down, acknowledge and process your emotions in order to more deeply understand the why underneath and at the root of your craving. Another strategy is having a supportive person to talk to. This may be someone you trust, or someone such as a therapist or health coach to provide support as you work through your emotional cravings. Learning to manage, accept and experience your emotions will help you heal your relationship with food.

As a Wholistic Food Therapist, my focus is working with women who struggle with emotional eating. I have put together a 3-Step Emotional Cravings Protocol that helps to stop the cycle of deeply rooted emotional eating patterns. If you would like a FREE copy, sign up for my newsletter on my website so you can begin managing your emotional food cravings today.

Making peace with food is possible. If you find you would like more support along your path to healing, contact me as I have a number of ways to help support you along your journey to a healthy relationship with food as well as with yourself.

5 Body Positive Mantras You Need Now (And How to Use Them!)

When working alongside women who struggle with emotional eating, I am able to witness their renewed commitment to themselves as they create a healthy mindset. They work hard for months and months to change old, self-defeating behaviors with new, self-care focused behaviors. They challenge themselves to shift their perspective around food and emotions in order to develop a deeper connection to themselves through awareness. This is tremendously powerful work! After all of this positive and healthy change, there is a lingering challenge that seems to plague most women (and most likely men). This lingering challenge is how they feel about their body---it is never good enough.

Why is it that we struggle to be content with our bodies? Why can’t we appreciate all of the amazing things our bodies can do? As women, we spend time complaining about our various body parts and feel that some distorted perception of “perfection” would somehow create happiness. Thoughts such as, if I had this-- or-- if I didn't have that, then I could be happy with my body-- seem to plague our minds. There are all of these conditions we place on our ability to be satisfied with our bodies. However, this is simply not true!

Happiness originates from aligning with what is true right NOW. Happiness is not a place to get to later, not before when things may have been different, but an experience of accepting what you have right NOW. Being body positive means being grateful for and content with your body as it is right NOW.

So how do we work to heal this long-standing negative perception of our bodies? How do we shift from disdain and disgust to appreciation, acceptance and gratitude for the body we have right NOW? With practice! So, what do we practice? We practice appreciation, acceptance and gratitude for our bodies in the here and the NOW.

So, you may be wondering what exactly is a mantra and what does it have to do with healing a negative body image? The word mantra means instrument of the mind. A mantra is a powerful tool used to center yourself in order to create a single pointed focus of the mind. When you first begin the practice of using a body positive mantra, your mind will try to argue with the mantra, to disregard it. Your mind will say things like, that’s wrong-- or-- that’s a lie. Your mind will inevitably wander to other random thoughts. This is why we have to practice!

When your mind wanders, try not to get caught into the story and roller coaster of your thoughts. Judging thoughts will be there and are a result of mental conditioning that has been created over the many years you have been struggling with a negative body image. All of the negative stories you have been telling yourself, negative stories you have been hearing from media influences and other people have become deeply engrained.

Remind yourself that this is a challenging process to shift from a negative body image to a more grounded, grateful and positive body image. It will become more comfortable with time and consistent practice. Again, each time your mind wanders, return your focus to your mantra. So, if your mind wanders 100 times, return to your mantra 101 times!

Try this challenge: for the next month, use one or more of the following body positive, self-love mantras. Spend 5 minutes repeating the mantra silently within your mind. After 5 minutes, spend 5-10 minutes journaling to reflect on your experience and how you feel. This time for reflection and journaling is a helpful because with practice, you will begin to notice a positive shift internally. Mantras are a powerful source of transformation that will be evident and reflected back to you through your reflective journaling process. So now, here they are!

5 Body Positive Mantras

1.    In this moment, I accept my body unconditionally.

2.    I am grateful for my body and all that it can do.

3.    I am just right, just as I am.

4.    I am beautiful, inside and out.

5.    I love myself, wholly and completely.

When you embark on this body positive, self-love mantra adventure, you will begin to heal your relationship with your body and in turn with yourself. You will grow in your self-confidence and find a deeper level of appreciation, acceptance, and gratitude for your body as well as for yourself. Most importantly, you will feel this growth from within, the only place that really matters.

One of the best ways to maintain your focus is to reach out and encourage others to practice with you! Who can you inspire to heal their relationship with their body? I’d love to hear how your month-long body positive mantra adventure goes for you, so please, keep in touch!