50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food (4 page)

When I realize that I’m stress eating and I just can’t calm down, I take a few deep breaths. It seems to clean out all the negative feelings and stops me from scarfing down another bowl of ice cream.

—Michele

Michele lay awake most nights worrying about everything she could possibly think of: from the trivial, like wondering if she’d turned off the light in the kitchen, to larger worries, like the possibility that her mother’s health was declining. Late-night munching seemed to help her relax and let go of her anxieties. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of distracting herself with cookies and milk, the same old worries came roaring back, topped with guilt feelings and a stomach that felt uncomfortably full. However, Michele discovered that mindful breathing exercises were the perfect antidote to stress eating for her.

Mindful breathing may be a helpful skill for you to learn too. Does it seem odd that something you do every single minute of your life can also be healing and therapeutic? Mindful breathing draws your attention away from troubling thoughts and stressful feelings. Instead of focusing on the content of the words in your mind instructing you to get food
now
, you direct your attention to a very different monologue. You talk to yourself about how to breathe well.

Try this for a moment. After you read these instructions, put down the book. Turn your attention to your breathing. Describe to yourself how you are taking in air—fast, slow, shallow, or holding your breath. Pay attention to how your breathing changes when you are actively thinking about this automatic behavior. Once you have done this, note how your attention shifts to your body. Your mind momentarily moves away from whatever you were thinking about to notice what is going on in your body. Simply practicing these instructions disengages your mind from thinking about food, even if it is only for a few moments.

Thankfully, you don’t have to think about taking each breath. Breathing is a bodily function that happens automatically. Your body is programmed to make it happen all on its own. The interesting aspect about breathing is that you can override the automatic system. You can make your breathing go faster, or you can slow it down. You can take over the driver’s seat.

Being able to control your breathing can be used to your advantage. You can trick your body into believing that you are resting or going to sleep. This will prepare your body to relax rather than eat. If your body thinks it’s going to be fed, it will start producing saliva so that you can chew food. This physiological response moves you one step closer to eating. On the other hand, if your body thinks you are about to relax or go to sleep, it sends the appropriate signals to slow down throughout your body.

Mindful breathing also can increase the oxygen flow in your body, which helps you to think more clearly. Rational thinking helps you come up with good alternatives to soothing yourself with cupcakes and leftover macaroni and cheese.

If you aren’t convinced yet that breathing exercises have healing powers, consider the Lamaze breathing exercises used for coping with the pain of natural childbirth. If breathing exercises can help women cope with the level of pain that comes with birthing a child, they can surely help you with whatever emotional turmoil you’re experiencing.

~self-soothing technique~

Breathing Exercises

Sometimes people are afraid of breathing exercises because they fear that doing them takes a long time. They don’t need to be long. They can be as long or as short as you would like them to be. As an added bonus, you can do them anywhere, anytime; for example, while you are driving, waiting for your order at a restaurant, or sitting in your own living room. Choose an exercise to match your mood from those listed below.

Here are some tips: Try doing these breathing exercises when you aren’t feeling stressed or aren’t smack dab in the middle of emotional eating. Note that it takes a lot of practice to get their full benefits. Don’t give up. Also, expect your mind to wander away and become distracted during these exercises. That’s inevitable. When this happens, just keep bringing your mind back to the task at hand.

Calming breath.
This is good for emotional eaters who turn to food to pacify strong feelings. Use this technique when you feel short of breath, anxious, or out of control:

1. Start with relaxing your neck and shoulder muscles.
   
2. Breathe in slowly through your nose, and as you inhale count to three.
   
3. Pretend that you’re going whistle.
   
4. Breathe out through pursed lips, letting the air out naturally. You don’t have to change your breathing or force the air out of your lungs.
   
5. Bring to mind the image of blowing bubbles.
   
6. Repeat. Keep doing pursed-lip breathing until you feel calmer.
   

Relaxing breath.
This is good for those emotional eaters who seek food when they are trying to relax and unwind:

1. Sit or stand, whichever is more comfortable for you.
   
2. Close your eyes if you want to.
   
3. Bend your arms at the elbows. Pull your elbows toward each other behind your back. Stretch your elbows back behind you as far as they will go.
   
4. Hold for a moment, then let your arms drop by your sides.
   
5. Inhale deeply.
   
6. Hold your breath as you count to three.
   
7. Exhale slowly.
   
8. Let all the air out.
   
9. Repeat steps 3 through 6 as many times as it takes to feel more relaxed.
   

Cleansing breath.
This works well for overeaters who need to clear out negative thoughts or worries:

1. Sit or stand comfortably.
   
2. Inhale slowly and deeply through your nose.
   
3. Hold that breath for a few seconds.
   
4. Pretend that you have a straw in your mouth and exhale a short burst of air forcefully through the small opening. Blow the entire breath out in little spurts of air. With each puff out, visualize blowing away any pollutants, toxic thoughts, or worries, continuing until you’ve emptied your lungs via these short, strong puffs. Imagine all of your toxic thoughts and worries falling into a puddle on the floor.
   
5. Repeat steps 2 through 4 six to ten times.
   

Energizing breath.
This works well for overeaters who turn to food for quick energy, to procrastinate, or when they’re bored:

1. Stand comfortably.
   
2. Raise and extend your arms straight up into the air three times. Then lower them.
   
3. Each time you do this, extend your arms a little further into the air.
   
4. Turn your attention to your breathing.
   
5. Breathe deeply. Your breathing can be natural. It doesn’t have to be altered.
   
6. Extend your arms out to your sides at shoulder height, then rotate them in the air ten times, circling up and then back.
   
7. Reverse directions, circling your arms down and then back ten times.
   
8. If you need an image to focus on, imagine your arms as a windmill.
   

One-minute mindful breathing.
Remind yourself to breathe deeply often. Write “breathe deeply” on a Post-it note and paste it on your bathroom mirror. Put another note on your computer monitor and put some more notes in other places where you will see them often. Send yourself an e-mail or text message to breathe deeply. Do whatever you have to do to remember to practice this energizing breath.

I love blueberry cake donuts. I even dream about them in my sleep. Today, I was totally stressed-out. I thought I would treat myself to one. Maybe I’d feel a little bit better. I ate one. Nothing. I ate another. Nothing. Five donuts later, I felt terrible. Why didn’t I stop after the first donut? Why didn’t just one make me feel better if that’s what they really do?

—Sarah

The skill of mindful observation can be very helpful for dealing with what some of my clients call the “emotional food scavenger” within them. Emotional food scavengers search for a good thing to eat until something is found that will hit the spot. They hope that if they find the right or perfect food, they’ll feel satisfied or better. The scavenger’s intent is to feel soothed and calmed rather than quieting a hungry belly. The emotional food scavenger is hungry, but not for food.

The real question is, what is the emotional hunger for? Are you lonely? Stressed? Nervous? What is eating covering up or numbing out for you? If you knew the answer, you could discover what would really make you feel better. A donut can’t even begin to fill your need for connection. Calling a friend can be the best antidote to loneliness. That’s why it’s essential to be more mindful of what your urge to eat is trying to tell you.

To answer the question of what you really need, try slowing down and responding to this urge to eat instead of merely reacting to it. At this point in your life, eating to soothe yourself has become like a knee-jerk reaction. You feel the urge to emotionally eat, and then you obey this internal desire quickly and automatically. So, how can you slow yourself down to get to the heart of your need for comfort?

~self-soothing technique~

Minding the Emotional Gap

Respond mindfully to your hunger. Work on consciously choosing how you will calm yourself rather than following automatic and habitual patterns. To do this, it is often helpful to create a gap between feeling hunger and responding to it. Your task in this exercise is to lengthen the time interval, the gap, between noticing your hunger and responding to it. It is likely to be between five and ten minutes. Such an interval gives you time to explore your options and consciously decide what you want to do: act on the urge to stress eat, or do something other than eat.

If your urge to eat is really emotional rather than physical, your desire to eat will fade when you find something to do that will distract you from food. When your mind is fully focused on something else, time flies by unnoticed. You’ve probably also noticed how your emotions change dramatically over time. Observe how your urge to eat will lose its intensity with the passage of time if it isn’t based on real hunger.

Aim to lengthen the time gap between noticing your hunger and responding to it. Begin by checking in with your body. Label the level of your emotional hunger from 1 to 10, with 10 meaning the strongest urge to eat. Your task in this exercise is to lengthen the time interval, the gap, between noticing your hunger and responding to it. If you can extend it to five to ten minutes, this will give you time to explore your options.

~self-soothing technique~

Try a Quick Breathing Exercise

In this technique, you work on coping with the urge to emotionally eat one moment at a time. The urge can become overwhelming if you think that you’ll have to endure your strong desire without responding to it for a longer period of time, such as an hour or two. It feels much more manageable when you focus on coping only one moment at a time. You can do one minute of anything.

• Redirect the content of your thoughts from “Must eat now” to more positive, affirming thoughts that encourage you to allow the urge to come and go. Focus on coping one moment at a time. You may find your mind fights this process by saying, “Oh, that won’t work.” Such thoughts will keep you stuck. Instead, say to yourself, “I will try.”
  
• On your in-breath, inhale slowly and say a phrase that reflects your strength and fortitude. Say one of these phrases to yourself: “I’m resilient,” “I can do this,” “I’m okay without food,” or “I will survive.”
  
• On your out-breath, exhale slowly and say a sentence indicating that this feeling will change. Use sentences like “I’m waiting patiently for it to end,” “I can hang in here,” “This isn’t forever,” or “I can take it one moment at a time.”
  
• Commit to doing this for one minute. At the end of that one minute, check in with your body. Where is your level of emotional hunger on a scale of 1 to 10 now?
  
• Ask yourself if you can commit to one more minute of doing this exercise.
  
• The strength of your urge to eat will either fall or be lessened a little, even if only a tiny amount. You will build your confidence that you will be okay if you don’t obey the urge to numb out or obtain pleasure from food.
  

If you have trouble focusing on your breathing, fill the gap between noticing your hunger and responding to it with mindful observations. Count the number of tiles on the floor or the ceiling. Or find and name everything in the room that is blue. You can also try some of your own ideas about ways to fill the gap. Then reassess the level of your emotional hunger from 1 to 10.

I yelled at myself for ordering a greasy appetizer at dinner. I didn’t need it and I just blew my diet. I told myself for the hundredth time, “Just let it go!” The rational side of my brain knew this was the best plan. But there is nothing I can do about that now. When I get something in my head, I can’t seem to let go of it.

—Samantha

Letting go is an act in which you release your need to control the situation. You stop telling yourself how it should be and begin focusing on dealing with how things really are right now. This attitude allows you to open up to new insights. When you see issues as they really are, you can start finding new ways to address them.

Letting go of, or not responding to, an urge to emotionally eat can take some practice. Samantha, a thirty-one-year-old high school teacher, felt strongly compelled to act on her every craving. She couldn’t allow thoughts of food to exit from her mind. Sometimes she literally found herself unable to put down her bowl of breakfast cereal until she either felt better emotionally or the contents of the entire cereal box were completely gone. When this happened, she felt overstuffed and very uncomfortable. Then she became angry at herself and found other ways to beat herself up emotionally.

Emotional eaters may discover that they have trouble letting go of many things, not just their guilt over their mindless eating episodes. Holding on to something that upsets or angers you is often more harmful to you than the event that triggered your anger in the first place. Also, stewing about things you just can’t change can be a powerful trigger for emotional eating.