Create a Life You Love to Heal Emotional Eating
If you struggle with emotional eating, there are some important questions you need to ask yourself:
Are you feeling fulfilled in your life?
Are you unhappy with one or more areas of your life?
Do you feel stuck or in a rut?
If you’ve said yes to any of these questions, it may be time to take a moment, re-evaluate your life and make a change. When you feel unfulfilled, you turn to food to try to “fill up” instead of getting joy and fulfillment from meaningful life experiences. The problem is, this leads to a vicious cycle of emotional eating because food will not fulfill your needs and deeper desires. Even if you temporarily feel better from emotionally eating, those uncomfortable feelings pop back up and you’re triggered to eat again.
Perhaps you’re not happy with your career, relationship, or you’re just lacking passion in your daily routine. Whatever it may be, creating a life you love can be pretty simple!
Here are 6 ways to create a life you love:
1. Make a list of things that make you happy
If a week goes by and you haven’t done anything that makes you happy, you aren’t living a life you love. Take the time to actually write down a list of all the things that make you happy. List hobbies, activities, people, thoughts, simple, and extravagant things. What things can you experience often? If you like to play volleyball, join a team that plays weekly. If you love spending time with your significant other, plan a weekly date night. By scheduling “fun” and making time for things that make you happy, you’re creating a life you’ll love.
Make a happy list
2. Say “Yes” to something new
Follow your internal compass and try something new that you’ve always wanted to do. Maybe you want to learn something new, make a career change or physically move. Whatever it is, listen to your heart and feel your desires. We often avoid change because at first, it’s uncomfortable. But if you want to live a life you love, you might have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable! Welcome new opportunities to learn and grow into a happier person.
3. Say “Goodbye” to toxic relationships
Sometimes you need to release people from your life. If someone repeatedly shows hurtful behaviour towards you, they’re toxic. If someone constantly makes you feel drained, confused, insecure, fearful or upset, they’re toxic. It can be very difficult and even painful to say goodbye to some people, but if they’re toxic, it’s well worth it! A big step in the right direction is deciding and believing that you deserve supportive and loving relationships – because you do! Once you believe this, it will be much easier to say goodbye to toxic people to make room for more loving and supportive ones.
4. Take ownership
While you can’t control what happens to you or what life throws your way, you do have control over how you respond. Take ownership for your actions. This requires some self-awareness and self-correcting. If you’ve ended up in a place you aren’t happy, how did you get there? How can you get yourself out? If you want to live a life you love, you need to make good decisions and take action to get there!
Express yourself