Today in the Bonheur Club, we welcome Julie Rogeon
In this episode, Julie Rogeon, naturopath and EFT practitioner talks to us about emotional eating. How to recognize it and how to break away from it? Julie gives us a ton of advice on diet, lifestyle and personal development to successfully stop eating our emotions. Are you ready to get better?
How to describe emotional eating?
“Eating your emotions”: this is the image Julie uses to best describe this term. Instead of experiencing our emotions we will eat to be able to cut off our feelings. And when we eat, we will be focused on the present action and not on our emotions. On a physiological level, we will also cut ourselves off from our feelings because our digestive organs will absorb between 60 and 80% of our vital energy. We eat to completely cut ourselves off from everything we feel!
It is not necessarily linked only to negative emotions (emotions that are unpleasant to feel).
Why are we more easily attracted to fatty, sugary foods, etc.? when we are sad or angry?
So it can initially be a habit, because in our society the food offered to us is very processed (therefore fatty or sweet). We will tend to gravitate towards this type of food because it will give us well-being and thus calm us down. We will feel an immediate pleasure which will be more accepted by society than certain other substances (drugs, alcohol, etc.).
How do we know if we are an emotional eater or not?
For Julie, we are all more or less emotional eaters. We can describe ourselves as such when it starts to pose a problem and when there is a form of dependence on certain foods. Because as Julie points out, it's perfectly acceptable to eat a little chocolate when you're not feeling well. Then there are emotional eaters who will be more into unwanted snacking and there are others who have real eating disorders and who will be diagnosed by psychiatrists. Indeed, emotional eating can also contain eating disorders but is not only linked to bulimia, hyperphagia, etc.
Do you have any advice for treating yourself or analyzing triggers?
You have to look at the emotional level with support to be able to look into your blind spots but also not neglect the body because there can be a lack of vitality!
And to analyze our triggers we can, when we want to eat, take a short break before 1 second to breathe and ask ourselves what my real need is and analyze the cause of this need. Is it stress? if so, we're going to go relax; is it fatigue? if so, we're going to go take a little nap etc.
Julie informs us that there are many different causes depending on each person: it can come from our education, the place of food in the home, what we heard as a child, abuse, the injunctions of society , comparisons on networks etc.
“Emotional eating is the tree that hides the forest”
Fasts, diets etc. should they be avoided during these periods?
Yes, they should be banned from practicing emotional eating because these are new rules and rules mean transgression. Indeed, emotional eating triggers a lot of guilt and shame. These are two feelings that are difficult to maintain and very present when it comes to food. They come when a rule has been broken. And to redeem ourselves we will therefore want to put even more rules which is not positive... We must therefore break down the rules to reconnect with our intuition and our deep needs!
However, we can increase our serotonin through food. Around 4/5 p.m. we will favor sweet foods which will generate the creation of serotonin and its arrival in the brain.
What to do when the emotion arrives with the desire to eat?
At the moment it may be possible to regulate yourself through another activity but it doesn't always work! If the impulse is really strong, Julie advises letting go and tackling the problem in reverse by finding the activity that will be there as prevention for the next time (breathing exercise, walk, tea, etc.). We must therefore act preventively rather than in the moment.
What is EFT?
It is a psycho-energetic technique, we combine words and at the same time we will stimulate acupuncture points in our body to circulate electricity and thus release emotions. EFT will be used to empty all the emotions that we have kept in our brain and which resurface and are juxtaposed with the news.
You must not lose faith and above all keep the power and your free will to be able to free yourself from emotional eating! You shouldn't hesitate to try lots of different techniques either.
To finish, Julie Rogeon gives us her advice and recommendations by playing the “Tonic Quiz” game (quick questions - quick answers):
- A book to recommend: The Power of Vulnerability by Brené Brown
- A particularly emotional food: chocolate
- A place to relax: Bare feet on the ground
- An activity to fully experience your emotions: A creative activity that we like
- A piece of natural advice: chew and chew our food at least 5 times
- The next person to interview Anne-Claire Meret
- One last piece of advice: have confidence in yourself and enjoy
Find Julie on her networks: Instagram @julie_rogeon and on her website https://julierogeon-naturopathe.com/ to find all her advice and video consultations.
Excellent listening!
We'll see you next week for a new episode of Club Bonheur.
Listen to the episode on your favorite platform.
