Breaking Through Barriers - Feelings

Tonight in the Breaking Through Barriers class we talked about feelings and emotions - how they can impact eating. No Duh!!! Emotional eating is often times the avoidance of unpleasant, uncomfortable or bad feelings. Boy do I know that! Sometimes people overeat for celebration, but usually those that are emotional eaters eat because of "trigger feelings" they experience. Tonight they said to experience the feeling, and then learn from it, instead of stuffing it down with food and drink. What a concept! Boy, this made me feel quite uncomfortable, yet hopeful, because I know that is probably 99% of my problem. I eat and drink mostly when I am sad, frustrated, angry, resentful, and also when I feel stuck or even when I feel bored. They said we should experience our emotions in a mature adult way and that emotions are really a call to action. Stuffing them away just makes them keep coming back to the surface. If the way you deal with unpleasant, uncomfortable emotions is eating, you will keep eating, and eating, and eating, until you determine how to learn from them and let them go. What a challenge this will be for the girl who holds on to certain hurtful, uncomfortable emotions like they are a life preserver. Oh my goodness! But, this is good. This should help me retrain myself to understand my emotions instead of stuffing them. This will take some effort and practice, but this, I believe, will be the key to setting me free from this viscous circle of yo-yo dieting, and binging. For the emotion of boredom they suggested finding activities that can take the place of boredom by making a list of things that you think are stimulating and exhilerating and when you feel bored do one of those things instead of eating and drinking. Sounds like a plan to me.