by Cina Hoey | Nov 3, 2021 | Binge Eating, Blog, emotional eating
The 11th Thing to Give Up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge & Emotional Eating is comparing yourself to others.
We made it babe! This is the last post of this series. If you’ve stuck with me through all 11, go you! And Thank you!
So if you are 100% ready to stop the destructive and exhausting battle with food, you absolutely must stop comparing yourself to others.
There is a quote that I love that says comparison is the thief of joy. I’d like to add to that and say that comparison is also completely delusional.
When I was the thinnest I had ever been in my life, I would bet that some other women would have envied the body that I had. Here’s what those women didn’t know.
I was miserable.
Anxious.
Terrified to eat anything.
And still feeling like my body wasn’t good enough.
You have no idea what kind of relationship that woman has to her body. You have no idea if she’s starving, critical, and anxious or if she’s truly at peace in her skin. To be clear, I’ll take peace in a bigger body over misery in a smaller body every. single. time.
Additionally, when you hit your goal weight you are not automatically provided a unicorn that whisks you off into a magical land where you have no problems. You’re still you. With the same thoughts, the same fears, and the same insecurities.
Yes, I’m being annoying and I know none of you are actually that delusional, but you are delusional if you buy into the “I’ll be happy when…” syndrome.
As a psychotherapist that has studied the mind/body connection quite thoroughly, I can tell you that the “I’ll be happy when…” game is a losing one. Here’s why:
Your body becomes addicted to emotional states the same way it gets addicted to substances. So if you spend years hating your body, comparing it to others, and feeling inadequate and shameful about it, you think weight loss is going to magically make all of those feelings go away?
Nope. Your mind has created some very well-worn neural pathways about criticizing your body and because the mind is efficient and a little lazy, it reproduces the same thoughts repeatedly because it conserves energy to do so. This is why just losing weight will not actually make you feel confident, empowered, sexy, beautiful, or happy.
So basically this means that YOU MUST CHANGE AT THE LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS before anything in your life really changes. This is true about weight, money, relationships, career, spirituality, happiness, anxiety, depression, and more.
I’ve helped enough people through enough problems to know this to be true.
So here is your opportunity to shift your mind and trust me babe, the rest will follow.
Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop robbing yourself of the joy you could have in the present moment, even if you aren’t at your ideal size right now. What a revolutionary thought! I could actually enjoy myself even if I haven’t lost weight yet!
Comparing yourself to others sets up the shame spiral, which sets up the binge spiral.
You are good enough as you are.
You are good enough as you are.
You are good enough as you are.
As I mentioned in the last post, your thoughts are the ancestors to your behaviors, so more compassionate and kind thoughts about yourself will lead to more compassionate and kind behaviors.
You are powerful beyond measure. You are the key to unlocking this.
Stop comparing yourself to women with completely different DNA, eating habits, and lifestyles than you. Stop comparing yourself to your sisters, friends, co-workers, and random strangers on tiktok.
This is your journey. Own it.
This sums up my 11 Things to Give Up to Stop Binge & Emotional Eating series. THANK YOU for reading, I hope you enjoyed it, and please reach out with questions and comments because I love your feedback! And if you know a babe that needs these messages, please share with them!
All my love,
Cina
P.S. If you are ready to take a deeper dive into this process, please reach out to inquire about individual and group coaching or my in-depth online courses to support you on your journey!
by Cina Hoey | Nov 3, 2021 | Binge Eating, Blog, emotional eating, self-esteem, Shame
The 10th Thing to Give up if You’re Ready to Stop Binge and Emotional Eating is Body Bashing.
You had to know this was coming. The last post was about shaming and criticizing yourself for your actions, and this one is geared towards the way you shame and criticize your body.
Here are some examples I’ve heard inside my own head and from my clients…
- “I’m so disgusting”
- “I hate my stomach”
- “My arms are so flabby”
- “I’m a fat cow”
- “My thighs are humongous”
- “I just wish I could lose ____ lbs.”
- “My body is so gross”
- “I’ve really let myself go”
- “My body is deformed”
You learned from your last lesson that shame and doubt lead to self-destructive behaviors like binge eating. Why would you take care of a body you hated?
When you body shame yourself, you are less likely to follow that up with mindful and supportive food choices.
When you body shame yourself you are less likely to practice self-care.
When you body shame yourself, you give others permission to do the same.
When you body shame yourself, you eat to deal with the stress of hating your body.
When you body shame yourself, you dissociate from it and cannot possibly eat intuitively…
…And this is the biggest threat to your relationship with your body of all. Body shaming only fuels the cycle of eating foods that don’t actually support or feel good in your body because hating it breaks your connection to it.
If we’re dissociated from our body, we can’t hear the body calling for our attention, whether that is to eat or to stop eating, so then we either restrict or over eat, keeping us in the very cycles we are looking to break free from.
I could go on for hours in this post because this is a topic I feel particularly passionate about, and forming a new relationship with your body warrants many, many deeper lessons, most of which are included in-depth in the courses I offer.
For now, know that body shaming has to go if you want to stop binge and emotional eating.
Be on the lookout for the critical voice in your head and do something absolutely outrageous … don’t listen to it.
All my love,
Cina
by Cina Hoey | Nov 3, 2021 | Anxiety, Binge Eating, Blog, emotional eating, self-esteem, Shame
The 9th Things to Give Up if You are Ready to Stop Binge and Emotional Eating are shame & doubt.
I know you’ve been on a million diets and you feel like you’ve “failed,” but the important thing to remember, as I mentioned in post #1, is that DIETS FAIL.
They don’t work, however when you are losing weight you will say, “oh I’m on the ____ diet!” And give it all the credit. But when that weight comes back on you blame yourself. You don’t see the link between the diet and the weight gain. You think YOU’RE the link, when in reality, it’s the diet.
This toxic relationship with food that you’ve been in for a number of years, alongside the horrific social conditioning about how you should look and eat, has led you to forget about the wonderful, worthy being you actually are.
You shame yourself because …
- You’ve lost and gained weight multiple times
- You can’t just eat “healthy” foods
- You love sugary, cheesy, carby foods that aren’t “good” for you
- You binge eat in secret
- You “fell off the wagon” … again
- You binge again after saying “this is the last time”
- You don’t fit in the clothes you used to
- You can’t seem to find a balance with exercise
- You’re the heaviest you’ve ever been
You doubt …
- Your ability to actually follow a program like mine that helps you make peace with food FOREVER
- That peace with food forever even exists for you
- That you won’t become a ravenous beast if unleashed near your favorite foods
- That you can maintain a healthy weight without dieting
- Your ability to show up, learn from, and support yourself
- That anyone would ever accept and love you if they knew how you really acted around food
Why would you treat yourself well, eat balanced, practice self-care, or exercise regularly if you hated yourself and felt like you were an awful, damaged person?
Something I tell my clients repeatedly is that self-criticism leads to self-destruction.
When you are self-critical in one moment, you end up behaving self-destructively in the next. In other words, your binge eating is driven by your critical thoughts about yourself.
When you stop shaming and doubting yourself, and start offering yourself compassion instead, a whole new set of behaviors show up that are in line with your new thoughts about yourself…
…because if self-criticism leads to self-destruction, self-compassion leads to self-care.
Shame leads you to seek perfection, which doesn’t exist, so when you inevitably fail at being perfect (we all do), you have more reasons to attack yourself.
WAKE UP, BABE.
PERFECTION IS NOT REALITY.
OVEREATING DOESN’T DEFINE YOU.
YES PEACE WITH FOOD FOREVER REALLY EXISTS.
YES YOU ARE CAPABLE OF HEALING.
YES YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE AND COMPASSION EVEN IF YOU ARE A BINGE EATER.
YOU ARE HUMAN. We fuck up. In fact, we are spectacular at fucking up. Are you going to learn from this or just continue to shame spiral?
The shame must go. Own your path. Own your imperfections. Own the fact that you are working on it even if you haven’t quite figured it out yet.
You’re amazing even for reading this blog and CONSIDERING change, because even that is scary.
If you can’t find compassion for yourself right now, borrow mine…
I love you. I see you. I understand you. I honor you. 💕
All my love,
Cina
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