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Authenticity & Stress Eating

Transparently being yourself, even when you’re not where you want to be, is genuine authenticity. When combined with an awareness of what you’re feeling, fueling stress, eating is the pathway to fulfilling your need for calm. Understanding how authenticity, stress, and eating intersect is crucial for managing your well-being.

Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen. ― Brené BrownThe Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Authenticity helps you understand yourself in the present moment. There comes a point where you can’t lie to yourself anymore. You can’t justify your actions, twisting your mind into all sorts of pretzel logic excuses.

  • In the addictions community, it’s called hitting rock bottom.
  • In the religious community, it’s called being who God knows you to be.
  • In the business community, it’s called being straightforward and empathetic.

Being authentic is about more than just wishing and hoping. It’s more than, ‘I’m a sinner, so I can do whatever I want as long as I repent before the end.’

What if emotional eating is the struggle when your authenticity with yourself gets stuck? This keeps you from knowing yourself and becoming a Conscious Eater.

You lose sight of paying attention to your unique thoughts and feelings. Instead, you follow the stereotypical majority. After all, no one wants to be left out. The bigger question is, are you leaving yourself out of your equation?

How can you make decisions that are in your best interests if you don’t know your needs? What if you use the problem of stress eating to make sense of your unconscious wishes, desires, and pain? Consciously, you can use emotional eating for information.

Authenticity benefits well-being, and stress eating detracts from it.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. – Marcel Proust

It’s not about the food, except for when it is.

People love to eat.

Aside from the fueling aspect, we like the pleasurable, sensual eating experience. The tastes, textures, memories, community, and calming eating experience. This is a good thing, and it is part of conscious eating.

It’s great to have a necessary experience that adds so much pleasure to life.

Many of the women I work with, at one point or another, talk about the wish to take a pill for total nourishment rather than having to deal with food. While this might sound nice in the short run, the real problem isn’t the food.

Food is associated with so many different and frequently conflicting messages.

From the standpoint of authenticity, the food is just food. It doesn’t have any unique properties beyond providing a source of energy. We associate memories and the feelings attached to them for a million different reasons. This shapes the experience of the food and, ultimately, yourself.

People enjoy receiving pleasure from food.

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. -Voltaire

When you eat something pleasurable, all sorts of good things happen in your brain. The reward centers say, “Yes, that’s great, give me more!” You feel good. Maybe you experience less anxiety and feel calmer. You’re more authentic, and stress eating may not even enter your mind.

Maybe you will feel better having had lunch with a friend. The focus isn’t so much on the leftovers from last night’s dinner you’re eating but on the conversation, caring, and sense of belonging you received by being in each other’s presence.

Food is so much more than just the nourishment of the body. It’s a multidimensional or multilayered relationship with your gender, culture, family, and yourself.

Authenticity is accepting and exploring how the calm you receive from stress eating works.

You might need to step away from diets to do this. If you stress eat and diet too, your thinking might go something like this: “I’ll admit that this is delicious, and I’m enjoying it. At the same time, I can’t say I like it. If I admit that I need sensual pleasure, that’s uncomfortable. Everyone will know that I can’t control myself.”

That’s not an incredible conversation to have with yourself. It can only lead to many cover-ups and explanations about your behavior. These lead you further from authenticity and make you even more stuck.

When you allow yourself to enjoy and savor food at least once daily, being mindful of your needs will satisfy you. Food is nourishment in the fullest meaning of the word.

If you accept that you like to eat, will it help you slow down the process of stress eating? Will it help you know that you don’t have to use the excuse of stress eating only when you feel out of control?

You can slow down, allow yourself to experience your emotions, feel your feelings, and stop stress eating so it isn’t even in the picture.

People want to feel good about their bodies.

Beauty is simply reality seen with the eyes of love.― Rabindranath Tagore

Most people, even with a bit of vanity, want to feel good in their bodies and look good!

You want your clothes to fit well and feel like your body is healthy. Perhaps most of all, you want to look pretty. You don’t want to be subject to others’ judgments!

Authenticity is about how your body aligns with your view of yourself right now. Some may say this is acceptance, but I hesitate. Acceptance often implies a fixed state of being; some would confuse this with giving up. That’s not the case and not the case with stress eating, either.

Acceptance is not trying to be someone, or somewhere you’re not. Acceptance is looking at yourself clearly and knowing who you are today.

Authenticity is stripping away the judgments, opinions, and rules that keep you stuck and unable to move in the direction you need to go.

How do you live more authentically in your relationship with food and your body?

  • Challenge your judgments with curiosity about where they originate and if the judgment has a reasonable basis.
  • Challenge yourself to increase your tolerance of uncomfortable feelings rather than stress eating. Most feelings will decrease in intensity after 15 to 20 minutes.
  • Allow yourself to get more comfortable with the awareness that pleasurable experiences with food are natural and healthy.

It’s a very intimate relationship. And, when you allow yourself to work your way through your thoughts, feelings, and memories, you can get to a new experience. An experience that will enable you to see yourself clearly – authentically as you become a Conscious Eater.