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Why do I feel worse when I eat better?
By Nancy Anderson-Dolan of WiseHeart Wellness Services
The vast majority of people who struggle with food and weight experience
this phenomenon. Eating is a mask for so many bad feelings. There is almost
always a period of readjustment that includes feeling bad. Eating is an
immediate comforting response that often moderates both physical and
emotional pain. When we stop using food, that original pain is brought back
into focus, as well as the new pain that the overeating may cause. Masked
emotional pain often leads to physical problems and so the journey to
wellness has to pass through all these things.
Even if we haven’t had trauma and tragedy, we often have not learned how to
effectively moderate our emotional experiences and so end up eating over
them. This way of coping doesn’t discharge the painful emotional energy. It
actually stores it up, generating anxiety that leads to shutting down to
cope (often with food) and a feeling of being disconnected. Without the
food, this all comes up as depression and loneliness.
So there are many, many reasons that we feel bad when we eat well. This may
all seem terribly depressing, but it is truly amazing how simply and quickly
we can learn to live with our discomfort and actually use it to heal
ourselves. It is possible to move through even years of accumulated and
unresolved emotional experience just by paying attention to what is coming
up in your body. If you struggle to do this on your own or have a traumatic
history, find a therapist that can help you reintegrate your emotional and
physical experiences.
Long-term weight mastery depends on being able to be comfortable with
discomfort. By understanding that the discomfort is part of the journey and
actually a valuable indicator that something needs to be felt not fixed, you
can begin to make good use of the pain as it comes up.
Getting the necessary support and making a commitment to walk into and
through your pain, releases old pain and establishes new patterns of dealing
and connecting with life. Reconnecting to ourselves brings ease to our
physical and emotional experience, while reconnecting to others brings peace
and happiness to our lives and a reconnecting to the deep force within
brings more power. With all that changing, the need to eat poorly diminishes
and the well behaviour feels great. Good luck feeling bad - you are on the
right path!
For more details on eating patterns, please contact Nancy Anderson-Dolan
at WiseHeart Wellness Service at 685.0864.
www.wiseheartwellness.com
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