Are you a woman who lives with a secret shame called Closet
Eating?
A closet eater is a person with a complex about eating in
full view and in front of others. For a closet eater, the
idea of eating food in public creates an excessively
uncomfortable feeling in their body generating fears and
beliefs that people are always watching them and judging
what they eat.
Most people speak to themselves over 10,000 times a day and
according to research done, studies show that the majority
of what we tell ourselves is based on criticism and
negative input.
If you are a woman who’s unhappy with your body and
frustrated with your weight, you most likely are beating up
on yourself with critical self talk. Since you are already
conditioned to think of yourself in negative terms, you
tend to think or believe that others share your negative
opinions and judgments.
If you struggle with feeling ashamed when you eat in
public, you are most likely replaying memories in your mind
of actual events that have occurred in which you felt
uncomfortable eating around people.
For example, as a young teen, like me, you may have had a
very critical Uncle Don, who felt that he was doing you a
big favor by criticizing your body and commenting on what
you ate.
As you sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, with a full plate,
eagerly anticipating enjoying your food, your Uncle may
have made comments about how fat you were and how the food
you’re about to eat will only make you fatter.
Since your brain is always searching to make new
connections, you associate Uncle Don’s scathing
criticism with the awful feeling of shame that you now have
in the pit of your stomach.
In NLP, we call this a kinesthetic anchor. Each time, you
are reminded of feeling criticized or judged, your body,
sends a signal to your brain flooding your body with stress
chemicals designed to alert you to danger. Your body sends
a signal that stirs your brain to remember this feeling of
anxiety, whenever you are in situations involving social
dining.
In specific, your ears sent a signal to the brain that,
“You’re going to get as fat as a house one day
if you keep eating that food.” You already look like
a truck driver from the back.
Desperately wanting to get away from this threat, you seek
to find a way to eat the food you want without being
noticed. By doing so, you create a new connection in your
brain that eating in secret keeps you safe and in control.
Yet because of the flood of stress chemicals that the
negative memories create, and societal pressures to dine
with others, you feel awful hiding and eating in secret.
Therefore, instead of eating Thanksgiving Dinner in front
of everyone else seated at the table, including your Ugly
Uncle Don, as many people would do, a closet eater will
pick at their meal, often claim that they are not very
hungry, and find a way to sneak the food away and eat it in
a place where they can be all alone, feeling safe and
protected from harm.
Until I finally stopped dieting, and learned to trust
myself around food and began to honor my feelings as well
as my body, I'm sad to say that I wasted years eating in
secret too.
I used to be very strategic and clever in thinking up so
many wonderful hiding places for food. I had stashes of
cookies in my coat pockets, candy bars under the bed,
wrapped snack cakes behind the toilet. I would eat in
public bathrooms, closets, behind locked doors, in laundry
rooms, anywhere that I could be assured of being alone.
For years I put on a show for everyone, including my Uncle
Don that I was doing my best to diet and lose weight. Yet,
the moment that I was left alone, I would desperately reach
for the food that gave my life comfort and joy. I felt
caught in a cycle of self abuse for decades, silenced by
the secret shame that I felt that I had no control around
food.
Today I’ve found a solution that can help you to end
your secret shame. I want to help you.
As a Professional Coach, I now understand that closet
eating is an example of an eating disorder. Unlike the
purging behavior associated with bulimia or the purposeful
acts of starving connected with anorexia, closet eating is
just as insidious in that it undermines the individual and
reinforces negative messages to their brain, making them
feel shameful and sinful.
If you’re suffering from this painful and shame
filled behavior, there is hope for you. One of the things
that I recommend doing is learning a process called
Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT. EFT will break the
connection that eating in public is shameful and
threatening.
EFT is based on the science of Acupuncture and often
considered to be it's emotional equivalent without the pain
of needles. Anyone can use it anytime to balance their
energy, feel better and overcome negative emotions and
fears in minutes.
The reason this re-balancing of energy is necessary is due
to the fact that when we experience stress and pain, our
bodies hold on to the memory of that event.
Consider that your body is like a smooth running current.
When things are going well, the current is flowing gently
and evenly. Yet when pain, upset or disease occurs,
it’s almost as though a monkey wrench has been tossed
into the works.
This disruption short circuits the entire system, causing
arcing and blow outs to occur everywhere. That’s when
everything goes wonky, your eating goes out of control, and
you feel miserable. That explains why you're reaching for
that food as soon as someone's back is turned. There are
parts of you that are short circuiting. If you want a quick
easy, painless way to smooth it all out again, EFT can
surely help.
----------------------------------------------------
Andrea Amador, CEC, M.NLP is President of The Juicy Woman.
She is devoted to empowering women to love themselves more,
yummy up their lives and lose weight without dieting. Sign
up for her free ecourse, Get the Fat Out of Your Head: How
to Change Your Thoughts to Shape Your Body
http://www.thejuicywoman.com/en/ecourse_enrollment/
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