The Stigma of Emotional Eating

People share with me that they are afraid to recommend Nutrigal Pals to a friend because it may mean they are commenting on their friend’s weight or body size. Rest assured, emotional eaters come in all shapes and sizes. Everyone eats emotionally from time to time but in the chronic emotional eater’s case it has lead to a painful and destructive cycle of emotional, binge eating followed by restricting and dieting.

Nutrigal Pal groups practice acceptance and love on all levels. These groups are about learning a new way to look at our lives, food, and our bodies.

Emotional eaters are binge eaters; they eat to self-soothe when life is rough; they eat compulsively or mindlessly; and some emotional eaters, when they’re upset, they don’t eat at all. Some emotional eaters qualify by hyper-focusing on their body size, shape, or weight; or by dieting compulsively. Many women tell me they’ve lost and gained the same 20 pounds over and over during their lifetime. All of these types struggle with the way they use food when they experience difficult emotions. Nutrigal Pal groups explore ways to regulate our emotions and reduce our stress by learning new skills in a supportive group setting.

As a facilitator and member of Nutrigal Pals I don’t instruct clients to eat this and restrict that or to count calories. In fact it’s not about food at all; it’s about our relationship to food. This is also not a dieting or weight loss program. Rather Nutrigal Pals is for women who desire and choose to:

• understand why diets don’t work for them and how to make permanent changes
• discover their internal cues for when, what, and how much to eat
• find out how to eat the foods they love without feelings of guilt or shame
• stop obsessing about food and weight and explore new life choices

Nutrigal Pals is for women who are “done with dieting” and are committed to breaking the cycle of emotional eating. It is for women that want to learn not only what is happening to them and why, but how to do things differently in order to make real and lasting changes. This is a group for women that want to make peace with their relationship to food. Nutrigal Pals is a unique group. It is for women that want to learn healthier eating habits and/or who want to quit binge-eating.

If you know of someone who might benefit from this group, please go ahead and pass this article along to them. Being an emotional eater is nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. You are not alone.