Blog Episode 10
May 10, 2021
Blog Episode 10
Emotional Eating and Ego Exercise
This is a pretty personal blog for me. I was never an athletic kid and didn’t really care about even watching sports until I was a senior in high school and cheered for the football team and was friends with so many of the school athletes. I was always inspired by the track team in high school and college as well as other sports teams. It makes a difference when you share dorms and live with them. You care about what they are going thru and see the hard work that they put into their sport.
I am sitting here watching the American Ninja Warrior Women’s Championship with 12 of the top women who compete on ANW. I have watched ANW since 2013 which is also the first year a woman completed the course. Many have followed in her footsteps in the years following. It is a hard course regardless of who you are and even the seasoned pros have off years.
Yay, one of them just hit the buzzer on the power tower on ANW.
This article is changing shape from what I originally had in mind on this topic.
Emotional eating. We have all heard the “experts” on why it happens. But I am curious how many actually have. Diet and exercise are given in how to deal with improving your body, nutritional needs, fitness, health and well being. But in what ways are the emotions and coping mechanisms altered and improved? Yes, moving your body absolutely works. I know that first hand. Yes, cleaning out your body with fasting or better nutrition works. Yes, self care and paying attention by keeping food logs, adding more water and restful sleep. It all works.
Once upon a time, I went an entire year doing just that and I lost 100 lbs in a year. It works. I am living proof of that.
But what I did discover was how big of an onion I actually was. We have been peeling my layers back in work for over 16 years and the new daily combined with years of experiences definitely plays into the longevity of the work to heal. I like to think of it as heal the peel.
I went thru a period in my life that exercise was multiple times a day without missing a day for almost ten days at a time. Ego exercise is a thing. What that means though may not be what you think it does. I wasn’t doing it for other people’s validation nor trying to show off. I was just trying to feel better about myself. For awhile I did, that is until I encountered other people being jealous of my success in losing weight. It is astonishing how many backhanded compliments I received. And worse, to watch others feel bad about themselves. I was never trying to hurt anyone just because I wanted to better myself. I couldn’t understand this phenomenon. Was it my ego or theirs that was being bruised as I did all of this work?
I know it was certainly my emotions when I was eating to cope. So why couldn’t it stay just about me when I was working hard and succeeding. I mean I was 100% strict about my eating and exercise in that time. I was even surprising everyone who worked at my gym. Internally though, I couldn’t get over the idea that this was forever. It just didn’t feel sustainable. I went longer than I expected to but when the excuses came, it was quite text book in the gradual things I told myself. I could cheat this time because I will work it off. I deserve it. I earned it. I lost all that, maybe I was too thin and a little more body fat won’t hurt. I had gotten down to 14% body fat so the stories I told myself were quite real.
Self sabotage is a real thing too when dealing with body image. Things that scare us and move us, things that are new to us externally and confusing on the inside. Just a big plethora of emotions and situations that play into it.
I will tell my full story at a later date. My point is that our emotions and ego have a variety of exits on the path of things to figure out.
I have my own coaches who help me now with my body image issues. Thoughts I use to have changed but new situations certain continue to bring up the triggers even with circumstances different.
Many times we may think we have coped when in actuality it may be repression. I even brought this up today with two friends about myself.
We all have work that we continue to do and recognizing our triggers, our understanding of what we can do about it and calling it the right thing takes help. In coaching, we give safe space to really dig in to future goals and provide the time to remove each obstacle with better thoughts behind the motives.
or to schedule a coaching session: https://calendly.com/…/practice-one-on-one-with-coach…
Our sessions will be on Zoom or over the phone.
Shine your light thru the Lighthouse Window to navigate to fulfilled dreams.