When we regularly eat in the absence of physical hunger cues, routinely choose unhealthy comfort foods, or keep eating when we’re full, something is out of balance somewhere. These tendencies suggest that we are missing important self-care skills that are generally learned in childhood. We may be lacking the ability to connect to and be mindful of our internal world — to consistently regulate uncomfortable emotional and bodily states, calm and soothe ourselves, and address our unmet needs. We may find it difficult to reframe self-defeating thoughts and self-belief distortions and to practice self-acceptance and self-love. Perhaps we never learned how to effectively grieve losses and disappointments, remind ourselves of our strengths and resources, and hold hope for the future. Without these skills, regulating our behaviors and setting effective limits for ourselves can feel like a daunting task.
Rewiring Your Brain and Your Response to Stress through Mindfulness
Throughout my own recovery from emotional eating, I was slowly piecing together the self-care skills I had been missing since childhood. As I practiced them, I noticed that something was happening to my brain that I wasn’t able to articulate until years later, when I began to understand the neuroscience behind the changes I had experienced.
Scientific discoveries of the last twenty years have demonstrated that the mindful, self-reflective skills I was practicing were activating and connecting the self-regulatory circuits of my brain and, in so doing, were actually changing the physical structure of my brain. As new brain circuits develop and strengthen, they facilitate more adaptive responses and behaviors, creating resilience and well-being. All of this translates into better handling of stress and less obsessive thinking and wayward eating.
Through therapy and the intentional exposure to other kind souls, I began to learn the language of self-nurturance: unconditionally loving, affirming, validating, supportive, compassionate, empathic, calming, and soothing words and phrases that could actually turn my mood from anxious to calm, from despair to a sense of possibility and hope. As I wrote these phrases in my journal, I was amazed to find that, over time, something was shifting inside. Slowly I was developing the voice of my very own Inner Nurturer and, with it, self-acceptance and self-love.
I found myself turning less often to external sources of comfort. As I strengthened this inner voice, I no longer felt obsessed with or compulsive about food. My weight and mood stabilized. I felt less overwhelmed. I procrastinated less. My inner chaos and outer clutter diminished. I felt more emotionally balanced than I had ever been in my life. And, as a side benefit, my relationships improved: as I was able to meet more of my needs on my own, I was more emotionally available to others. Connection and intimacy began to replace the emptiness and loneliness I had lived with for so long.
Learning to Nurture Yourself
In my previous book, The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual, I covered these self-care skills in depth. I also covered key body-balancing principles (such as adding whole, unprocessed, plant-based foods to your eating plan and addressing body and brain imbalances) and soul-care practices (like practicing mind-quieting exercises and learning to let go). I introduced the very important skill of self-connection, which simply means regularly checking in with your emotions, bodily sensations, needs, and thoughts and accessing an internal nurturing voice capable of reassuring and comforting you and helping you meet your needs.
After the book’s release, I received emails from readers all around the world describing how these skills, principles, and practices had helped them. They told me that they had never realized that they could learn how to nurture themselves. Over and over again, participants in my seminars, workshops, emotional eating groups, and Twelve-Week Emotional Eating Recovery Program echoed these sentiments and told me they felt encouraged by the notion that learning to nurture themselves could be the way out of a lifetime of food and weight obsession.
In this book, I expand on the concept of mindful self-nurturance and share with you the seven skills that constitute the practice I call inner nurturing. While it isn’t necessary to read The Emotional Eater’s Repair Manual prior to reading this book, if you are struggling with emotional eating, becoming familiar with the skills, principles, and practices of my first book is an invaluable first step.
My goal in this book is to show you how to nurture yourself by building and strengthening your Inner Nurturer voice and related skill set. You’ll learn to soothe and comfort yourself, calm your stress-response apparatus, and grow and strengthen the regulatory circuits of your brain. You’ll learn to meet your needs without turning to food or other unhealthy substances or habits. As a bonus, you’ll enhance your resilience and sense of well-being.
Given that our early childhood environment has a powerful influence on brain development, and that you can’t go back in time for a redo, it can be easy to feel hopeless about your chances of altering your brain’s functioning, improving your self-care and your response to stressors, and resolving eating challenges. But there is good reason for hope.
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to reconfigure itself — to establish and dissolve connections between its different parts in response to experience. Our brain is an incredibly resilient and plastic (moldable) organ, and we continue to develop and expand our brain circuits throughout our lives. Research suggests that well into old age, our experiences can actually change the physical structure of the brain. In other words, it’s never too late to learn to nurture yourself with the loving-kindness and self-compassion that you deserve, rewire your brain for optimal long-term emotional health, handle stressors more easily, and give your wayward eating the boot.
Ending Your Emotional Eating without Going on Another Diet
If you routinely snack mindlessly or excessively, overeat at meals, or binge, this book offers you a way out from a lifetime of suffering. If you’re ready for an alternative to dieting, this book will help you address the true causes of your overeating or imbalanced eating.
Whether you were fortunate enough to have been raised by loving, kind, well-intentioned caregivers or had the misfortune of being reared by unkind, abusive, or neglectful elders, this book gives you the tools you need to connect to and pay attention to your mind, body, and spirit signals and respond to them with love and care.
If you’re the parent, therapist, teacher, caregiver, spouse, sibling, or friend of someone struggling with emotional eating, this book will help you better understand, nurture, and support those you love and care for.
This book will also be helpful for anyone, not just emotional eaters, who may have missed out on consistent and sufficient emotional nurturance in childhood. You may not overeat, but you may overuse alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, or drama, or surf the internet to excess. You may spend money compulsively or gamble irresponsibly. Perhaps you’re a workaholic or an overexerciser or use busyness as your drug of choice. Maybe you have trouble controlling your anger and routinely lash out at others. Perhaps you’re chronically late or struggle with procrastination. If you have difficulty controlling your behaviors and disciplining yourself or activating yourself, this book can help you.
How to Use This Book
Since each chapter of this book builds on the previous one, it’s best to read the chapters in order. The Emotional Eating Checklist, which follows this introduction, will help you get clear on your particular emotional eating challenges.
Part 1 discusses how we develop self-regulation, or the ability to manage our emotions, moods, thoughts, impulses, and behaviors. In order for our brains to develop and connect the proper circuitry for self-regulation, we require attuned or “tuned-in” experiences with our early caregivers. These experiences help create secure attachments, activate certain pathways in the brain, strengthen existing connections, and enable new connections to be made.
Throughout the book, I share actual cases (with the individuals’ names changed to protect privacy) that demonstrate how insufficient emotional and physical attention, chronically stressful interactions with our caregivers, separations, or traumatic experiences early