How to use your body to heal your eating

Heal your eating

Healing your eating is a multi-step process that takes time, effort, and work.

But, the results are so, so worth it.

One incredibly effective, but often overlooked, approach to healing your eating is ’embodiment’ – getting out of your head and all the cravings, control, guilt, shame, and self-talk – and into your body.

Here’s how.

How to heal your eating with embodiment

Whether you’re dealing with binge eating, overeating, emotional eating, food addiction, or another kind of eating challenge, I explain in this article that your experiences are a message.

One common ‘message’ is that you need to start connecting with your body more. This is profoundly healing and today we’re going to look at how you experience your body and how your eating may be talking to you through it.

This can be super scary if you’ve spent huge amounts of time ignoring your body because it brings you discomfort or shame.

But, you know that sick feeling you get after you’ve binged? That’s your body asking for attention.

Your eating is a voice that can not be shut out.

It’s powerful.

And that power you feel your eating has over you?

That’s really YOUR power. Your body’s power. If you can learn to listen to it, harness it, and work with it instead of against it, just imagine what you can do with all the energy that’s there.

It’s actually kind of exciting!

Some journaling questions for you

This may seem counter-intuitive – to begin exploring embodiment through writing. But, if you’ve been shunning, ignoring, shaming, or hating your body – then suddenly trying to jump right into it might be overwhelming.

These questions are a great place to start thinking about embodiment and making some connections for the journey ahead.

Embodiment journal prompts:

• What fears do you have around your body? Its health? Its size? Its sensations? Its pleasures and pains? 

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• What are you trying to control about your body? 

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• Do you use your body to reward or punish yourself? Through food, exercise, restrictions, or releases. 

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• How do you use your body to feel pleasure? 

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Have a look at what you’ve written. Can you see any places where things don’t feel right? Any patterns that need to have some light shined on them? Sometimes things might jump out at you easily, and you can see an active way forward, other times you might benefit from some help.

How ‘bad’ can be ‘good’

If you experience ‘bad’ things about your body – this can actually be a huge blessing. It’s often the ‘bad’ feelings that get our attention most and encourage us to change.

So, now I’m going to give you some advice that might make you extremely uncomfortable:

Welcome your next binge.

They are massively rich opportunities to listen and learn. Not everyone has this – they might have to suffer in powerless mediocrity forever.

You, though.

You’ve got such an attention-grabbing chance to do something, to make a change, to get in touch with your body in a way that will change your life.

The next time you feel a binge coming on, grab one or both) of these exercises and see what truths emerge for you.

These exercises are fantastic if…

• You paid attention to your binge and could feel something in your body asking to be heard.

• You know you have poor body image

• Your body experiences are mostly negative (pain, shame, discomfort, symptoms, etc.)

By getting ‘out of your head’ and into your body – either during an experience of unwanted eating, or at a non-food time – you’ll start to feel what it is that you really want and find ways to fill yourself up without food.