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LINKS FROM VIDEO

Join our Freedom from Emotional Eating Online Program (use code “GMACK” for 10% off): http://bit.ly/2tVTnp5
Glenn’s blogs on Emotional Eating: http://bit.ly/2h25Sue & Mood & Food: http://bit.ly/2uvJgHf
Coffee Break on More Marvellous Methods to Manage Moods: http://bit.ly/2eMEbVO
Relaxation & Affirmation Audio Program (use code GMACK for 10% off): http://bit.ly/1UFmp1o

SHOW NOTES

• Viewer question on the food reward/guilt cycle. [1:30]
• Is emotional eating achieving what you want it to? [3:09]
• If not eating, then what? [5:00]
• The “secret” question to ask yourself. [6:10]
• Parting thoughts on reward & emotional eating. [7:39]

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to Thursday Therapy where I answer your questions on the psychology of eating, movement, weight and body image. Guys, with our freedom from emotional eating program coming up, we are answering a lot of questions throughout all things emotional eating, so I thought I’d answer one that’s a little bit emotional eating, a little bit reward eating, we’re not going to split hairs today and answer it on Thursday Therapy. The question comes from Fiona. Fiona says, “Hey Glenn, loving the videos. How about addressing the reward guilt cycle? I know I often fail to eat well because I feel like buying junk is a reward for having a good day or for making it through a bad. I deserve it. I’m working on rewiring that bit that I deserve healthy nutritious delicious food – but it’s a strong pull. Food is cheap and a well-tested reward that’s hard to replace.” Fiona, thank you for your question and thank you for your patience, I know it’s been a long time me getting to this one and I suppose I want to catch my answer in the understanding that eating to reward yourself or to manage your feelings is not always a bad thing. You know, in almost every culture in the world celebrations are marked with food with people getting together and it’s a really healthy really natural really positive thing to do. Similarly, even the eating that we do to manage our unpleasant feelings, while we probably want to minimize it, it’s not the worst thing in the world, especially given all the other things that you could be doing. The reality is though that we do, do a lot more of this type of eating than we want to, most of us, so I want you to use these ideas to help you broaden out your mood managers and maybe change the way that you reward yourself and not necessarily have to take food out of the equation completely. I think for most people the first step to really overcoming reward and emotional eating is recognizing that most of the time it doesn’t really give you what you want. Now, I’ve written about this event at recently, so I’ll provide a few links to some of my blogs for people that want to know more but let’s use you as an example, Fionna. You’re going to getting home at the end of the day and you’re wanting partly a celebration, you know, a pat on the back for a day well done and sometimes maybe partly a commiseration, you know, some acknowledgement of the pain that the day has put you through and while you might or you might not get some pleasure from eating, you haven’t said in your message, some people do get that initial pleasure from eating, some people do say to me look I don’t even get that anymore, the only thing that you’ve really mentioned is guilt. Now, this is really, really common but of course it’s not a very rewarding feeling. So, the next time you go to do this emotional slash reward eating, it’s all kind of jumbled in together and sometimes it can be hard to tease apart, I just want you to ask yourself, what do I need right now, what do I want right now and is the food really going to achieve it. If the answer is, yes, beautiful, enjoy completely guilt-free but if the answer is no, there’s something really powerful in recognizing that the solution is not in the fridge, not in the pantry, not in the local convenience store, you’re going to want to find a reward, you are going to want to find a way to feel better and recognizing that food and that instance is not the answer will open your mind up to new answers that will really get you what you want. Of course, the next question becomes, what are these new answers? If I don’t use foods a reward or comfort myself then what do I do? Now, I’m going to give you a bit of a circular answer here and tell you that the good news is there are literally thousands of ways you can feel great without food. You just have to find the one or ones that are right for you. Now, to get you started I’m going to link you up to a coffee break we did recently on my Facebook page where we just spent over 20 minutes just talking, sharing, brainstorming, some really wonderful ways to feel great without food to comfort yourself, to get yourself out of bad moods to reward yourself, it was a really cool discussion. I threw out a few of my quite different mood managers and some people came up with some amazing stuff, it really opened my mind so head on over there at some stage and I’m sure it will open yours too. So, the question I get most commonly is what do I do differently and that’s where we need to get to. But for me, the most powerful question, kind of the secret question is, how do I get there? The key is really in the process, so I really want to encourage you to take that process of having a play, experimenting, exploring, refining, searching and if you undergo that process you will eventually get there. Fiona, you’re already on that part, you know, you’ve already kind of identified by your question that food is not really the answer a lot of the time there, and you’re already starting to find one new way, delicious nutritious food, to reward yourself and feel great without eating that junky type food, so that’s what I’d really encourage you to do between now and next Thursday Therapy; is just open your mind, get creative and have a bit of a play. For people who are really stuck at the moment, we’ll give you a link to our relaxation and affirmation program, which includes seven different meditations that are designed to open you up to what we call more marvellous methods to manage your moods, which are just great ways to feel great without food. So, guys thanks for being with me for another Thursday Therapy. I hope you found it valuable and I really want to encourage you to just have a play around with these ideas for the next few weeks. I’m sure that something great will come out of it. Of course, for anyone who wants further support with overcoming reward or emotional eating, we’re going to provide the legs to our freedom for emotional eating program, where we really talk through this in a lot of detail, give you some theory behind it and help walk you through it step-by-step, so you can get that support for implementing it. If you like this video, let us know by sending us a like, we always love to hear your comments and if you think someone else will benefit why not share it with them. Until then enjoy experimenting with those new ways to feel great, food free!