Breaking free from the anxiety, emotional eating and weight cycle – Blossom Hypnotherapy

Do you turn to food when you feel stressed or anxious? It’s no surprise if you answered yes. Eating is a common way many people help themselves to feel better when they’re under stress.

To make sense of why this happens, you first need to understand anxiety.

Now, you’ve probably experienced anxiety at some point in your life. It’s completely normal. Maybe you can remember how unpleasant it feels too.

For many people, anxiety means a sinking feeling in the pit of the stomach, tightness in the chest and worrying thoughts going round on a loop.

Even though anxiety is totally normal, when you’re caught in it’s grip, it can feel painful, confusing and scary.

Little wonder then, that most people try to avoid feeling anxious. Many people find turning to food helps take their mind off these difficult thoughts and feelings and calms them down.

Eating can feel good. It soothes the mind. This definitely helps in the short term. But, the relief is only temporary. Once you’ve experienced that first reprieve from anxiety, you may want to turn to food again and again as a way to cope. Over time it can even become a habit.

You may even end up becoming more anxious as you start to worry about food and your weight, as well as whatever was troubling you in the first place1.

Why you get anxiety?

Anxiety has existed for as long as humans beings. It’s the body’s safety mechanism, alerting you to any possible danger so you can keep yourself free from harm. Millions of years ago, when we all lived in caves, anxiety helped our ancestors to find food, fight dangerous animals and avoid life threatening situations.

Of course we no longer live in caves. In our busy, modern world almost anything can trigger anxiety. It could be thinking about work, comparing yourself to others or even a comment someone’s made.

Now, not all anxiety is bad. A little bit of anxiety can help to give you the extra energy you need for a job interview, to finish a project or to help you to cope with a relationship break- up.

But it can start to become a problem when it feels like anxiety is getting out of control. If you find you’re spending too much time worrying it can start to take over. One of the things that creates anxiety is worrying about your weight, appearance or what you’ve eaten.

The anxiety, emotional eating and weight cycle

Persistent anxiety has an impact on the body.

When you become anxious, your body reacts just as it would if you were facing danger – kicking in your fight or flight response.

Your body sets to work releasing the hormone adrenaline to help you fight whatever threat you may be facing. Your body gets signals that it needs more energy in case you need to run or fight. It then sets to work releasing glucose, or sugar, into your bloodstream.

After a while, the adrenaline wears off and your blood sugar levels drop. This triggers another hormone, cortisol, to rev up. Cortisol helps give you more energy so you can continue to fight the threat.

Cortisol triggers your body to release another hormone, insulin. Insulin works to regulate your blood sugar levels. It can also set off sugar cravings or cravings for high fat, salty and ultra-processed foods. It may also make you hungry as your body works to replace the energy it thinks it’s lost .

Cortisol can also slow down your metabolism as it’s trying to help you save energy so it’s available for when you need it. Your body is trying to make it as easy as possible for you to run away or fight any threats. So it works to try and save energy for you by storing fati.

Before long, this can turn into a vicious cycle. Get anxious, release cortisol, gain weight, crave more sugar, eat more sugar, gain more weight, get anxious about gaining weight. In fact, research shows the effect anxiety has on weight and eating habits. An 11 year study of over 25,000 men and women found the higher the anxiety, the higher the weight gain over timeii.

As anxiety is felt in the body, you may also notice your stomach playing up. Once anxiety takes a grip you may start to experience digestive problems. You may develop discomfort after eating even if you’ve never had it before. This, in turn, may lead you to restrict or avoid certain foods. This can make you more anxious, especially If you start to worry about eating or before or when eating certain foods.

Feeling tired

With all this going on in your body, it’s not surprising that anxiety can make you feel very tired. This tiredness makes it harder for you to be active. This is another way your body is trying to conserve energy for you. So, it becomes harder to motivate yourself to do exercise. In fact, some people may stop exercising all together.

Unfortunately, this reinforces the anxiety cycle. Exercise helps to give you energy. Not only that, it combats stress and is a way you can become more aware of your body. The less active you become the harder it can be for for you to regulate your anxiety, emotional eating and weight.

The tiredness can affect you in other ways too. Taking the time to prepare food for yourself may feel like too much effort. Instead, you may find yourself eating more takeaways or ready meals. This can make you feel more tired in the long run.

Enter eating and drinking

So, anxiety really doesn’t feel good. If you’re feeling anxious a lot of the time, it’s natural to want to get away from it. In comes food (and/or alcohol) as a way to help you to get some relief.

We use the term emotional eating because eating (and drinking) can help soothe uncomfortable feelings. For many people, food is a source of comfort. Eating certain foods, especially those you ate as a child, can create feelings of security and warmth.

Many people find that while they’re eating or drinking, they don’t notice their anxiety. And when it comes back later, they remember eating made them feel better. Without realising, they may start to turn to food as a way of coping with anxiety. Over time, this can create problems of its own.

Temporary relief

While eating and drinking does momentarily distract you from your worries. It also means you’re not taking steps to solve your problems. And over time, it can lead to relying on eating as a way to manage the ups and downs of life. Many people end up with unhealthy eating habits such as relying on snacking, night eating, or trying to compensate by restricting food, avoiding certain foods or food groups. Others try to deal with the problem by taking more and more exercise.

For some people what starts as eating to cope with anxiety can lead to binge eating. Binge eating involves eating a large amount of food to cope with unwanted emotionsiii. People who binge eat may also feel guilt and shame for their behaviour, or feel out of control around food. This then creates even more anxiety.

Becoming more anxious

This way of trying to cope with anxiety often creates more anxiety about eating and weight. All the while, the original anxiety is still there. It may even be getting worse as more and different anxieties also come on board.

Body image concerns

Comfort eating, sugar cravings and binge eating can make you feel critical of your body. You may develop anxiety in social situations for the first time. As you focus on how you look and worry about being judged about your body, you may start to withdraw socially. You may find yourself turning to food even more as way of relieving your critical thoughts and feelings.

For more check out five-practical-ways-to-improve-your-body-image

Worrying about eating

Worrying about certain foods making you feel ill or gain weight can lead you to avoid certain foods. This can lead to a diet-binge cycle where the more you ban certain food, the more you try to avoid them, the more you end up bingeing on them. Simply thinking about eating these foods can trigger anxiety and you may experience guilt and remorse if you do eat them.

Feeling depressed

The triple whammy of anxiety, putting on weight and feeling out of control around food can make you feel low. It can even lead to depressioniv. Feeling depressed can make you feel anxious. Depression also makes it hard to eat well and take exercise and you can end up withdrawing from the things that will help you to feel better.

Emotional responses

If you are struggling with weight and eating problems, it can feel as if a deluge of unpleasant emotions have been released. You may feel pressure to hide your weight and problems with eating. You may even start to eat secretly and avoid social occasions where you may be expected to eat. This can lead to feelings of shame and guilt, further feeding your anxiety loop.

Breaking free from anxiety, emotional eating and weight worries

If you’re struggling with anxiety, emotional eating and weight, it’s possible to break free. Together, we explore what’s causing your anxiety and I support you to find other ways to manage it. We look at your thoughts, feelings and actions and find ways of getting them to work for you in the way you want.

Together we find new and better ways to manage your feelings and to find better ways to cope. We work together to develop strategies to overcome anxiety and change your emotional eating habits. Often this involves learning to deal with feelings in a more positive way, becoming happier with yourself, being able to say no to food and people, and more besides.

We always work at your pace. I take time to support you to develop the skills you need to make changes. I’m dedicated to helping you to become confident in your own ability to take action, put changes into place and to do the things that matter to you.

Client story

Elinor’s problem

Elinor (not her real name), is a 46 year old operations manager and divorced mum of two. When she first came to see me, Elinor was plagued by anxiety. She was working long hours in a demanding job and caring for two teenage daughters. She was exhausted from working late into the evening and trying to be one step ahead at work. When she stopped working at around 10pm, she would raid the fridge. Then she’d begin snacking, eating without noticing as she scrolled on her phone. This was how she tried to make herself feel better.

Elinor felt the time she spent snacking at night was her time. It was the only time she got any peace as when she was eating she wasn’t worrying. This was something she’d done for years to help her to manage anxious feelings. She could even remember sneaking food as a child as a way to make herself feel better.

She felt eating chocolate, biscuits and crisps late into the night helped her to forget her worries, just for a while. Afterwards, she would lay awake beating herself up for putting on weight and being out of control around food. Every night she planned how she would do better the next day. As a result, her sleep was suffering and she’d wake up feeling tired and lethargic. This in turn made her more anxious, and she was turning to food more and more.

Elinor was becoming concerned about her health as her weight increased. She felt bad about herself and the example she was setting to her daughters.

She couldn’t understand why she kept on eating. She’d plan to stop. Elinor would start a diet, couldn’t understand why she couldn’t stick to it and end up feeling even worse.

Elinor felt bad about herself, her appearance and her eating habits. She described her relationship with food as “out of control”. The longer this went on, the more anxious she became. Elinor was worried what would happen if she didn’t stop. It was starting to affect her confidence and her relationships as she became trapped in an anxiety, eating and weight cycle.

Elinor’s results

We worked together to unpick what was causing Elinor’s anxiety and to understand the effect it had on her life. Gradually, Elinor began to realise what triggered her anxiety. We put strategies in place to help her to notice when she was starting to feel anxious so she could act before it got out of control.

Elinor began to realise that she had been using food to help her when she felt anxious for a very long time. As we worked on reducing her anxiety, Elinor was more able to choose how she responded when anxiety did show up. We worked together to give her differentways to cope with life’s pressures.

She began to recognise the signals in her body that told her she was hungry and how they differed to the ones that signalled anxiety. She gradually turned to food less and less. As she stopped judging herself for not being able to control how she ate, she also became more open with friends and family. She felt more supported and was able to let go of her night eating.

As we worked together, Elinor began to feel more confident.

In Elinor’s words

This is around the 3rd time I’ve attempted to write this review as I cannot really articulate how life changing this process with Celia has been for me.

Having followed a never ending cycle of diet/lose significant weight/stop diet/regain all lost weight plus extra – for my whole adult life, I realised I needed to do something to address the root cause rather than the behaviour.

The course with Celia was nothing like I expected weight loss hypnotherapy to be but it was absolutely what I needed it to be.

I thought it would be a soothing voice telling me to stop eating enough times that I would hopefully just stop over-eating! Instead, it was a process that Celia guides you through expertly, honestly, realistically and without judgement. A process that I believe has fully set me off on a journey to be altogether healthier – physically and mentally. Not just slimmer.

Although, that being said, I am slimmer! I’ve lost a stone so far with no noticeable effort. This is purely down to the hypnotherapy and working on recognising the emotional triggers, changing habits and so on. And without depriving myself of my favourite foods either.

But it’s actually so much bigger than this! In one particularly enlightening session, I instantly understood so much about myself and how I’d come to be this overweight/this unhappy. Consequently, I don’t hate myself/appearance anymore. I cannot express how liberating that is aged 45! 30 odd years of being so vile to myself- just gone (…nearly gone anyway)!

I’m looking after myself in so many other ways and it’s having such a positive impact on all elements of my life – my relationships, my parenting, my work life balance, my general mental well-being etc.

But more than anything, I feel so ready to be a physically healthier person. Anxiety is a huge trigger for overeating for me and unfortunately, this year kickstarted with a series of highly testing events. And I’ve just lost a steady lb/half a lb a week. No gain! This is such a win for me.

And I know I’ll continue, with Celia’s recordings and resources, with everything she’s helped me work through – I’m very much on my way to being the healthy me I want to be.

Celia really listens. She’s compassionate and encouraging and gives you the confidence to step back and think about how you can move forward.

I just want to say thank you Celia.  You are a pleasure to work with and I appreciate everything you’ve done for me

Change is possible

If this sounds like you, just like Elinor, you too are able to change. It takes courage and perseverance but it can be done.

Try these techniques to help you.

1. Track your anxiety

If you feel like you’re anxious a lot of the time it can help to pinpoint what’s causing the anxiety. Every time you find yourself struggling with an anxious thought or feeling, write it down. Getting your anxiety out of your head and onto paper can make it feel less pressing or immediate, which can help you let go of the anxiety.

Once you’ve tracked your anxiety for a while, you’ll get to understand what’s triggering your anxiety. Awareness is the first step to change. You can use your understanding to make changes to help you.

For more ways to help with anxiety check out https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/worry-what-to-do-when-you-cant-stop-worrying/

2. Find ways to manage your emotions

When your anxiety is spiking and you have the urge to eat for comfort try some different ways to manage your anxiety.

Some things that help my clients are:

• Practising hypnosis
• Listening to a guided meditation
• Reading a chapter of a book
• Doing a crossword puzzle
• Going for a short walk
• Practicing mindful breathing
• Keeping your hands busy with an activity like knitting, drawing, or coloruing with an adult colouring book
• Writing down your feelings in a journal
• Calling a friend or family member
• Doing some yoga or tai chi
• Doing self massage
• Speaking to yourself with kindness and compassion

For more have a look at https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/creating-calm-uncertain-world/

3. Use self hypnosis

Hypnosis has been found to be effective in reducing anxiety. A review by Valentine, Milling et al in 2019 found those treated with hypnosis improved more than about 84% of those who didn’t receive hypnosis. It was the most effective in reducing anxiety when it was used with other psychological interventions. Many studies have shown hypnotherapy to be effective for changing eating habits and losing weightiii.iii

Hypnosis allows you to experience positive thoughts and images as if they are real. Using self-hypnosis can support you to make changes to the way you think and feel about situations and how you respond to them. It can help you to change your habits so that you no longer end up comfort eating to cope with anxiety. Hypnosis can help you to embed in new and helpful ways of managing anxiety. Self-hypnosis is a tool you can use to harness the power of your mind and help it to work for you in the way you would like.

It’s challenging to change your habits, especially if you’ve been using them as a way of coping. The longer you’ve used food to help you to manage anxiety, the longer it will take you to change. So, if you have an episode of anxiety eating, don’t beat yourself up over it. Anxiety is a difficult emotion to cope with,and learning to use supportive coping skills to respond to it is an ongoing process. It can be helpful if you can try to learn from the experience and think about what you could do differently next time.

Instead of criticising yourself for not living up to the standard you’ve set yourself try and think about the changes you’ve made so far. Even one small change is a step towards doing things differently. See if you can focus on the positive changes that you have been making. Maybe it’s been reaching out to friends for support, working through your issues with anxiety, taking up exercise, or becoming more aware of what triggers your anxiety and responding to it in ways that help you. Give yourself credit for making these changes and focus on the progress you’ve made rather than one lapse.

For more tools and techniques to help you, check out my blogs on  binge eating, eating mindsets  and disordered eating.

For more on how I work with people around food and eating click here.

Contact your GP if you are vomiting, misusing laxatives or severely restricting your food, even if you are still at an average weight.

If you think you may have an eating disorder, contact BEAT

Would you like to make living life easier, right now? Get your free Live Life on Your Terms recording here and begin to live your life with confidence.