Intuitive Eating at Thanksgiving

Intuitive Eating at Thanksgiving

by | Nov 12, 2021 | Binge eating, Holidays

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Can you be an intuitive eater at Thanksgiving?

It can seem like an oxymoron to say you are being an intuitive eater at Thanksgiving because they don’t really seem to go together.

Doesn’t seem like if you’re going to talk about Thanksgiving, it’s about overeating, about having a lot of different foods and about binging. When we talk about intuitive eating, that’s about becoming more in touch with your body and what your body needs. 

I don’t think intuitive eating and Thanksgiving are talked about enough. 

I have learned that after years of being an intuitive eater, and helping other intuitive eaters, I know it is possible. And I know that it works at Thanksgiving, because I’ve done it myself and my clients have done it also. 

I call this time of year the Holiday trifecta, which is the time between October 1 and December 31 when there are many different holidays. This is really the time of year where people are encouraged to binge and to overeat. And we really give ourselves a pass on eating intuitively. I’m okay if you want to overeat. That’s fine.

If you do want to overeat, consider if it is coming from the backlash from the diet mindset, right? I have talked about this often on the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast and in my blog: that the diet mindset (the dieting and restricting) leads us to binging, at certain times. I think this is what actually leads us to binge over the holidays and then we restrict throughout the year.

Binging over the holidays is socially acceptable, as long as you plan to diet in January. It’s this never-ending cycle. I want to wonder with you if you could plan to eat intuitively 365 days a year? Eating on Thanksgiving is no different than eating on February 3rd, right? They’re not different. And we could come to the table like literally and figuratively in the same way through using intuitive eating all throughout the year. 

Over the holidays, marketers create a feast or famine mindset with holiday foods!

I find this time of year is really challenging, because we’re really met with the idea of special foods. Those foods that only come out during the holiday time. And they’re available only for a limited time. They’re special and you can’t get them at any other time of the year.

Starbucks is great at this. They’re great about having the pumpkin spice latte that comes out on a certain day and lasts for a limited time. There’s this limited time where you can get it and that’s just like restriction. Throughout the whole year we cannot get pumpkin spice latte (it is like a restriction) and we know it will end soon, so we look forward to it and go crazy over it, because it’s in such limited supply.

This is where marketing does that kind of feast and famine idea. And then we buy more of it!

I also became aware of this binge/restrict idea over the holidays when I thought about the foods that we have at Thanksgiving time. I thought about and realized that I literally could have any of those items in that holiday meal anytime throughout the year.

I wonder for you, if you allowed yourself to have these foods at any time of the year, if they felt like they were something that wasn’t special, but that were regular. If you wanted it, I tend to not have the holiday foods the other time of the year because I just make other choices. 

Intuitive Eating means food is not restricted and I can have what I want. 

I don’t need to restrict all year, and then binge at the holiday time. It is the dieting mindset (I need to restrict) that can lead you binge over the holidays. 

Consider the concept of habituation, which is when you have full free access to foods that you want: you are not denied foods. This is what happens around Halloween and candy. If you have access to candy throughout the year, Halloween doesn’t become that big of a deal. When you have the food in your regular rotation as what you can just have, it’s just food that you have. It doesn’t feel like you’ve been restricted during the other part of the year. Habituation is one way to get out of that dieting mindset.

The messages about binging are so pronounced this time of year. It is constantly in our faces about having this food, about how special it is, and how you should just eat. If you want it eat it. That is fine. Just recognize that when we intuitively eat, there is always the opportunity to eat what we want.

The idea of overeating at the holidays is ingrained in our society. 

I just want you to be aware that its part of our society and kind of we made the decision to jump into that mindset and to be a part of it. And I’m saying there is a way to jump out of it. 

Some ideas that are ingrained in our society are: 

  1. We should exercise heavily on Thanksgiving, so then we can have permission to overeat later in the day. This comes from the mindset that we have to punish ourselves with exercise, so that we can eat more later on in the day. 
  2. A long time ago, when I would go to weight loss programs, I remember going quite a few times at Thanksgiving time and we’d be given a paper plate. We were supposed to plan out what we would have on the plate on Thanksgiving. We’d be told the number value to each of the foods (points, calories, macros, etc.). You would then pick all the foods that you wanted, and you’d write it on your plate and write the number value equal to what you were allowed to have on that day. Then that was what you were going to eat for your holiday meal. I was planning what I would have on Thanksgiving days/weeks before it was even that day. Truthfully, I do not know what I really want until the day of. It was expected you would eat the items and amount that was written on your plate, and then you’d stop. Then you were expected to just stop without any real way of making that happen. Or reason why. It was not based on hunger or satiety, just on what number value you were allowed to eat. 
  3. I also know people will not eat to have the super large Thanksgiving meal. This is restricting to overeat. This is part of the dieting mindset. If you do this consider what you’re doing and notice how it set you up for failure.
  4. Another thing that happens over the holiday is overeating your favorite foods, because it’s the only day you’re going to have it. Telling yourself, I’m going to really go all in because this is the only day, I’m going to have this food. Well, like I said earlier, really this food, at least in the United States is available all the time. Really think about if it’s this one special food, and you want to have it other days of the year, have it other days of the year. That’s what Intuitive Eating is all about. 
  5. Overeat on Thanksgiving Day and expect to be physically uncomfortable. I know of people who overeat at Thanksgiving knowing they will be sick. They have pills or supplements available to curb the upset stomach. Ask yourself, why am I eating foods that make me sick or eating quantities that make you sick. This is another place where Intuitive Eating is so helpful. We believe you should eat what you want and eat until you’re satisfied. 
  6. I have learned many low calorie, low fat and not tasty foods. You make the version of the item to be low calorie, low fat. It was never the tasty version of it. You’re eating something that really isn’t as satisfying. Intuitive Eating says to eat what you like, eat what tastes good. 

How can you be more intuitive at the holiday meals? Here are some things I do:

First, my family choses to be active on Thanksgiving. Our family has a tradition to do a local turkey trot, because it’s fun, people dress in fun clothing and a great community gathering. If we’re not able to do that, we’ll go take a long walk on Thanksgiving. We don’t do it to burn calories. We do it because it feels good. 

Second, I eat my regular meals, at regular times, just like normal. The Thanksgiving meal is one meal of the day, I don’t come to the table starving. I don’t come with expectations of eating a whole lot or eating a little. I come to the table with expectations of putting a reasonable portion on my plate, the amount that I want and the food that I want. I’ll tell myself that if I want to have more, I can go back and get more. And what I find is now that I’ve been doing intuitive eating for quite a few years, is that I’m pretty good on what my portion size is, and I don’t need to go back for more. But I don’t have this internal obsession about having more food.

Third, I pay attention to my hunger cues and eat when hungry. I also notice my satiety cues (fullness) and stop when full. I scan my body and start noticing how hungry am I? Do I want more food is my body needing more food, what might be my right kind of food? I don’t want to eat in a way that’s going to make me feel sick. 

Lastly, I pay attention to my emotions. Emotions are one of the six components of feeding your soul. I always make my mental plan about how I will take care of myself emotionally throughout Thanksgiving. I put together my plan of what I need to do to take care of myself. If I feel overwhelmed or a little bit overloaded with people or with what’s going on, I tend to I might take a walk, go talk to different groups of people, or changing the subject helps me a lot. Taking a deep breath helps me emotionally. I have ideas of what I can do emotionally, so that I just feel really calm and centered throughout the whole event. 

Consider is what you might need for the holiday this year. If you were going to enter the into this in more of an intuitive eating kind of wait, what might you do? You could try one of my ideas or use some of your own. I encourage you to consider them and make your plan in advance for how you can be more of an intuitive eater during this time of year. It is always my goal to have peace around food and peace in our lives because that it just feels better that way. I encourage you to try intuitive eating this year and see how it can work for you.

(Note: you can listen to this blog on the Feed Your Soul with Kim podcast)

Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. 

Ready to make changes in your life and with food? Sign up for Emotional Eating Solutions 8-week Self Study Course here. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms.

Kim is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration.

Holiday Trifecta_ Candy Edition

Holiday Trifecta_ Candy Edition

by | Nov 4, 2021 | Binge eating, Emotional Eating, Holidays

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Today we’re talking about something very current that’s going on. I call it the holiday trifecta- the candy addition.

And every year I talk about in my blog on my podcast with all my clients, about what I call the holiday trifecta. And that is the time between October the first and December the 31st.

Where we’re inundated with food that is different than what we have during the rest of the year. And what I noticed is that there’s a lot of concern about overeating, concern about emotionally eating concern about gaining weight. And this all leads to dieting in January. It’s like the setup the three-month setup of overeating.

And sometimes we’ll go into this time-period with kind of an abandon of Oh, what the heck, I’m just going to eat all I want to eat and then come January one, I’m going to die it and lose all the weight or

I’m going to regain quote unquote control over food then. And I want to challenge you to think about this all differentl

There are these strong messages that you can’t control food.

Those messages show up during the holiday time because it feels it can feel kind of out of control. And then the message come January one the way you are supposed to control it then is to diet. We have that binge diet cycle going on, that’s hard to get out of, we also can get the message that we can’t stop eating once we start, which reinforces the idea that we shouldn’t even start eating.

And then if we do eat, if we do eat these things that we think are bad, that then we’re feeling out of control because we shouldn’t be eating it in the first place. Also, we know that eating overeating is super pleasurable.

And it’s been the way that we’ve coped with different issues in life. It’s the way that we react, if we’re happy, if we’re excited, if we’re sad, if we’re lonely. If we’re angry that eating helps us cope that just is something that’s happening. These are things that happen over and over, and they show up a lot during the holiday time.

The other thing that happens during the holidays and that I really want you to think about is that the holidays are rife with special foods, the special foods that come out once a year. So what happens right now we’re just done with Halloween and what showed up was candy, a lot of candy. 

I don’t know about you, but it was really interesting that my daughter came home with a lot of candy it seemed that this year we’re one year out from the pandemic starting that there was more people giving out candy and giving out a lot of candy and big pieces of candy. I’m so surprised at how much candy she came home with.

And how many people were out trick or treating and how much candy was out there. This is that once a year thing where we have all you know we buy the bags and bags of the little candies all the little candies We like or maybe we buy little candies that we don’t like because we’re afraid to have them in the house.

But this is the one time of year that candy consumption is huge and socially acceptable that we, we just allow binging on candy on Halloween, it’s very, it’s very normal to have that happen. The other thing that happens once a year is the special foods come out, there’s a lot of places that have special types of food, it’s the once-a-year thing.

There’s a big lookout one is pumpkin spice latte, which Starbucks puts it out at a special time every year. And it’s a short period of time. If you want to have it, it’s one of those foods that’s going to go away at Starbucks. It’s brilliant marketing because it gets you wanting this thing. And then you might have a lot of it because you know, you’re going to be deprived of it for the rest of the year, that kind of idea of it’s a restriction for the rest of the year. So when it comes out, you might tend to binge these things like a pumpkin spice latte.

Because come I don’t know what time of year, it’s going to be gone soon enough, because they’ve just brought out the Christmas, the Christmas recipes, so it’s gone, and then you can’t have it. You’re going to want it more because it’s in such limited supply.

There are other special foods that we bring out this time of year, the cookies, the holiday cookies, the cheesecake, Turkey, gravy, ham rich foods, lots of things that we don’t have every year. We binge on them because we don’t allow ourselves to have them the rest of the year. 

When we allow ourselves the holiday foods throughout the year, they lose their hold on us to binge them. 

We know through the research about habituation is that the more we’re allowed to have these foods, that the less they have control over us. So literally if we allowed ourselves to have candy, Turkey cheesecake, if we’re exposed to them more or had access to them more often throughout the year, they wouldn’t have such a draw for us this one time of year, and then we wouldn’t be binging on them because they wouldn’t have that big of a grasp on us. 

It’s interesting that at a local fitness center, one of the things they’re doing in the month of November is a “no candy” November. You win a prize at the end of the month if you don’t eat candy. And I thought that was interesting because that once again goes to the idea of restricting ourselves from certain foods because we can’t control them.

If we are in this kind of group setting, then we’re buying into the idea that I need to restrict candy because I can be out of control with it. And it’s interesting to me that so many people buy into that mindset of “I need to eliminate a type of food, because I can be out of control with it.” They didn’t say, let’s eliminate soup or let’s eliminate salad or let’s eliminate apples, because there’s good/bad concept associated with candy. 

Consider and wonder, if you are falling into that kind of mindset of, “I shouldn’t have any more candy.” 

There was trick or treating the other day and now there’s all this leftover candy. I know people that will sell it to the dentist, who then send it to troops overseas, which is kind of a nice thing to do, because they deserve as much a sweet treat as anybody. But there’s also this idea that you need to get rid of the candy because you can be out of control with candy. 

Maybe what makes you out of control with candy is that you deny yourself of it. 

It’s just a different way of looking at it. And it becomes more in alignment with the intuitive eating idea that we talk about here. We know from research is that we binge that there’s a diet/binge cycle that happens. 

Here is a way to look at what happens:

Diet/Restrict leads to Binge leads to Shame leads back to Diet/Restrict: it is a cycle

Think of this cycle as a circle where you start dieting/restricting, because you do not like how your weight or how much you have been eating. Then, at some point, you binge, because you have been deprived. This binging leads to feeling shame (I have myself, I am mad at myself, or I am afraid I will gain weight).

The only way we know how to deal with the shame is to go back and diet/restrict. We think this will solve the problem. And we start the cycle all over again. What I want to do is help you get out of that dieting binge cycle, because it just is a circle, it goes around and around and around. 

It and it’s becoming harder and harder to notice what are diets because they’re touted as being healthy a healthy lifestyle, a healthy way of eating. Generally, those are code words for diet and restriction. 

The other thing we know about binging and how to start noticing when this is going on is that we start to look at food is good and bad. This is good food, this is bad food, this is what I should eat, this is what I shouldn’t eat.

There’s a right food, there’s a wrong food, there’s healthy food, there’s unhealthy food.

And we, we think that if we eat these certain foods, that the outcome will be that we’ll get fat. You think you must avoid this bad food, because you’ll get fat from it. Or I’ll feel bad about my body, or I’ll be out of control, and I can’t stop. We tend to want to keep that bad food out of our out of being in front of us.

I was just so earlier just talked about that fitness center that’s having a contest to not eat candy all month. That is because they’re calling candy, bad food. And what we know is that when we start calling it bad, ultimately, we’ll want to have it because calling it bad and not having it is a form of restriction. And we’re ultimately going to have it. 

 

What I look to do with people is to help develop this idea of peace with food and this way of being a peace with food. And it’s very, very doable. So, let’s talk now about what we can do to get off of this holiday trifecta of candy being a bad food where we can’t have it or we can’t have it around. What I want you to do is to:  

  1. Start being curious. If you want to have candy right now, wonder what’s going on? Am I really wanting it and I responding because I’ve not allowed myself to have it before? Is it that I’m scared about it? Am I concerned about having it? Am I sneaking it and trying to not let others know that I’m eating and begin to have this kind of inquisitive style about what you are thinking of eating most, especially when it is the “bad food”, the “wrong food”, the “unhealthy food”, the “fattening food?” There is this idea that our society has put forth that that we believe then gets dealt with come January one through a diet. And if it really got dealt with, we’d never have to go on a diet on January when again. The diet would be done. That’s not how it works, because the cycle keeps being a repetitive cycle. One thing to do is to be curious to help you get off of that diet/binge/shame cycle. Ask yourself a lot of questions.
  2. Prioritize having pleasurable food, eating foods that you love, eating foods that are yummy, tastes good and feel lovely in your mouth. eating what you love, can be scary. I know you are concerned that you will get out of control. If you’re allowing yourself to eat pleasurable food, you’re not going to be binging, because you’re allowing yourself to have pleasurable food. People will think that if they eat pleasurable food, that it means that every day they’re going to have whatever sweet things or cookies or whatever thing that they think they binge on all the time. And what we know through our research on habituation is that the more you’re exposed to the food and allowed to have it, if you want it, the less you want it, because it will be one of the many types of food you can have throughout the day. Then it is not that big of a deal. 

The holidays can be a time of peace and joy, especially with food. If that does not seem possible you can join us in our Emotional Eating Solutions Self Study Course. It is super affordable and available now. 

Want to learn more about Holiday Trifecta: Candy Edition? You can listen to the full version on our podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim.

 Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration. 

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE

Here is #1

Here is #1

by | Oct 26, 2021 | Binge eating, Emotional Eating, Lifestyle

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I took a little time off over the summer from producing my Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast. I think the pandemic caught up with me and I decided to rest. I don’t know about you, but I was ok last year with the pandemic, but this year was a little rougher. 

Since I have not done a podcast over the summer, I thought it would be good to come back out with my first podcast ever. I remember feeling scared and excited to get the podcast going. It has been a labor of love. 

In this first episode, you will hear me talk about the six core components to Feed Your Soul. These are foundational ideas that will give you encouragement to look at food and yourself differently. 

Have a listen on the Feed Your Soul with Kim podcast.

We are headed into the time of year I call the Holiday Trifecta and I plan to have my next podcast focus on this topic. The holiday is a time of overeating and that can be scary. 

If you have not checked out my DIY program Emotional Eating Solutions– you need to get to it. This program walks you through all the topics I work on with my private clients, but it is at a fraction of the price (ONLY $197). Please note if you are thinking about getting this course- DO IT NOW! The price will be increasing the beginning of 2022. 

 

Let’s get peace with food,

Kim

 

I want to hear what is going on for you. You can email me at info@FeedYourSoulUnlimited.com.

 Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration. 

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE

The #1 question is…

The #1 question is…

by | Jul 29, 2021 | Binge eating, Emotional Eating, Lifestyle

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Truthfully, the number 1 question I get is:

How do I End Overeating?

Often people think it is a secret. So, I am offering the 6 Secrets to End Overeating a free live Webinar on Friday 7/30 at 12:00 pacific to answer that question. 

Why should you attend this webinar?

  • You find that you eat when you are not hungry? 
  • You end up eating more than you planned, and then feel afraid you will gain weight? 
  • You find that you eat for emotional reasons?

You are a smart person and can’t seem to figure out how to stop the battle with food and your weight. You have tried diet after diet, and nothing seems to work for the long haul. It can seem like there is no way out of the cycle of dieting, overeating, and then feeling guilty from gaining weight. Now, you will learn how to end overeating. 

Join me live on Friday July 30 at 12:00 Pacific to get all the answers to your question. 

Sign up in advance to get the link. No problem if you cannot attend live, it will be recorded, and you will have access to it later in the day. 

You will learn:

  1. The 6 secrets to end overeating. 
  2. See how overeating is not about what you think it is about.
  3. Identify a doable at the end of the webinar that will have a profound impact. 

?Looking forward to seeing you at the webinar.  

Peace,

Kim

P.S. Trust me you do not want to miss this webinar. Sign up now: https://go.feedyoursoulunlimited.com/6-secrets-to-end-overeating-webinar-1425

 Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. She is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration. 

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE

Do you eat your emotions?

Do you eat your emotions?

by | Apr 16, 2021 | Binge eating, Emotional Eating, Podcast, Self-Love

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You eat your emotions? This sounds like a strange question, right. It also means do you eat when you are lonely, angry, tired, sad, happy, or overwhelmed. I am not talking about occasionally eating over your emotions, I mean often. 

Emotional eating (or stress eating) is using food to make yourself feel better, eating to satisfy emotional needs, rather than to satisfy physical hunger. … And you often feel worse than you did before because you feel angry with yourself and you have not addressed true hunger with food.

Recently, I asked my community what their challenges with food were and what they wanted me to talk about.  One hundred percent of the people polled said they needed to hear more about emotional eating.

Interestingly, when I talk to people about emotional eating, initially they do not think they are an emotional eater.

They think they just eat because they have not found the right diet or they just like food too much. Once we talk about the ins and outs of emotional eating they resonate with the concept.

This occurred so much that I created the Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz (you can take the quiz here).

One way to determine if you are an emotional eater is to start noticing when do you eat. This can be extremely hard to do. If you have a history of eating mindlessly then noticing feelings that lead to overeating is exceedingly difficult. 

Another way to determine if you are an emotional eater is to look at what you are saying to yourself about food. Do you criticize yourself about your food choices and say they are “good or bad foods”? These thoughts engage the part of your brain that wants to stay stuck. Really food is food, there is no good or bad food. 

Emotional eating also comes when we eat from emotional hunger, not physical hunger. I have talked on the Feed Your Soul with Kim podcast and in my blog about the Four Hungers. 

I think it can be helpful to know the basics of the different kinds of hunger, so you can start noticing what might be leading you to overeat. 

Basically, the Four Hungers are: 

  • Tummy Hunger- the feeling of hunger in your stomach.
  • Heart Hunger- this is the emotional hunger. 
  • Mouth Hunger- the yearning for the taste of a certain food.
  • Head Hunger- the thoughts of food in your head. 

As I stated before we are an emotional eater, we mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger. Responding to emotions for our clues to eat, will generally lead us to overeat. 

What is the difference between physical hunger and emotional hunger?

*Emotional hunger can be strong and can feel overpowering. It’s so easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for to help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart. Start noticing what your body feels like when you are physically hungry. Some of my clues are my tummy grumbles, low energy, mood starts to dip. 

*Emotional hunger strikes you suddenly. Bam! It hits you quickly and it feels overwhelming and urgent. 

Physical hunger, on the other hand, comes on more gradually, if you are paying attention to it. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t eaten for a very long time).

*Emotional hunger generally turns into mindless eating. You will tend to eat to overfull before you even notice what you are doing. You might have an agreement with yourself that you will only have one or a little, but you end up eating it all.

I hear stories all the time (this is my story too) where you have a container of ice cream and it is gone in one sitting. When you are eating for physical hunger, you can feel in control, conscious and empowered with food. 

*When eating from emotional hunger you do not feel satisfied when you are full. You will notice you are full, but not want to stop. This is when we say, “It tastes so good, I did not want to stop.”  

When eating from physical hunger, you don’t need to get overfull, because you feel physically satisfied. You have satisfied the physical hunger. You cannot satisfy emotional hunger with food.

*Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach. It is a sense of overwhelm and you cannot get the thought of eating out of your head. You feel compelled to eat, not matter what your physical hunger might say. You cannot talk yourself out of it.

Physical hunger is grumbling in your tummy or a hunger pain. You physically feel this type of hunger, it is not emotional. 

Now that you have learned more about emotional eating it can be time to take some action. Here is a step to take NOW:

I know that overeating can be a tough problem and the solution takes one step at a time. The first step is to take the Am I an Emotional Eater quiz. After you have taken the quiz, look at the questions you have said yes to.  Could it be that you are an emotional eater? If the answer is, yes, congratulations you are moving in the direction of peace with food.

Kim McLaughlin, MA is a Counselor, Speaker, Podcaster, and Inspirational Coach who specializes in working with people who suffer from binge eating and emotional eating. She is a Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor. 

She is the author of the book Feed Your Soul Nourish Your Life! A Six Step System to Peace with Food and the Amazon #1 Best Selling book Discovery Your Inspiration. 

You can find Kim on her podcast Feed Your Soul with Kim and you can find it on all podcast platforms. Listen to the podcast focused on emotional eating here. 

Determine if you are an Emotional Eater by signing up for the free Am I an Emotional Eater Quiz at https://kimmclaughlin.influencersoft.com/FYSU-EE