WEEK 3 CHALLENGES

Habitual & Emotional Eating

Goal:

This week's goal has one main focus: breaking the emotional eating habit!

Obviously, I hope the week won’t be stressful, BUT it would help us practice 😁

Jokes aside :) On Monday, please start with Challenge 7, which I’ve added to help you stop pushing away your hunger.

For the rest of the week, we'll focus entirely on breaking the habit, managing your emotions differently, and finding ways to sit with those feelings more easily.

All Week

Moving Past The Ideal (Challenge 7)

🔔 This week, I want you to pay attention to the things that create and keep certain ideas about how to eat alive (the pushing of hunger, you’ve done in the past).

You’re already doing better, incorporating snacks, I want you to be fully aware of situations or thoughts that might comes up, so in the future you can sport them instantly and thus dismiss them as rubbish, we no longer follow 😎

  • Continue to listen and honour your hunger as you did over the past couple weeks. When you notice judgment around meal times (or foods), ask yourself why and be honest.

  • Reflect on diets you’ve followed in the past to see if any lingering judgment remains. For example, if you used to follow a low-carb diet, you may still unconsciously judge carbs, even if you're not consciously restricting them.

  • Challenge family eating times, by having a snack, when really hunger but no dinner time yet or only eating a little, when lunch time with your husband at 2pm, but you’re not as hungry. Even if you happen to be super hungry an hour later, that is okay. You eat, when you are hungry, and don’t when not. As long as you practice and fully reconnect I want you to be completely selfish (in a good way 😄) when it comes to your hunger and appetite.

  • Finally, remind yourself that you are unique. Your tastes and needs are different from others, and they can also change over time. What you like this month might shift next month, and that’s perfectly normal.

Day 2 - 3

Habitual + Emotional Eating (Challenge 8)

🔔 Now with more knowledge about the why and how from last week, let’s practice the how :)

  • Let’s kick off practice, but FIRST: please watch the two videos below 😊

  • The main goal is to stop acting on urges, whether they are triggered by emotions or specific events.

  • If no urges come up over the next three days, that’s great! Don’t feel confused if they don’t show up — sometimes the work we’ve done is so transformative that the habit may already be lessened.

  • However, I believe that especially in times of stress caused by overwhelm about what to eat or workload, the urge may come back. If that happens, you’ll be prepared!

  • Important: An urge to stress eat or eat habitually (like after seeing a client) is not the same as simply wanting to eat something sweet. That is completely normal. You have both physical hunger and appetite, and both should be honored.

    However, an urge to eat—whether it’s something sweet or a burger—when you don't feel physical hunger signs or true appetite and it was triggered by a specific event (like stress at work) is an urge to eat emotionally, which is the habit we want to break.

↓

The first video gives you a better understanding of how to break the habit, and in the second video, you’ll learn the difference between appetite and the urge to eat out of emotions or habit.

In the video, I use the word ‘binge,’ but the feeling is the same whether one eats emotionally, habitually, or binge eats—all three involve overeating that isn’t driven by true hunger or appetite signals.

Day 4 - 7

Emotional Eating (Challenge 9)

🔔 These exercises are to help you manage emotional eating urges by shifting your mindset and creating a sense of control over your emotions.

The goal is to break the habitual pattern in your brain, the false solution of using food to cope and replace it with healthier mental approaches. Each one helps reframe your emotional responses, giving you practical tools to manage the urges and not act on them.

Simply calling your husband and just saying what’s already on your mind helped so much already. Below you find some more ways ↓

01. Journaling: When you feel the urge to binge, take a moment to write down exactly what you're feeling. By putting your emotions into words, you externalize the stress and create some distance from it.

→ This helps you process and understand the root cause of your emotions instead of reacting impulsively.

02. Emotions Are Temporary: Remember that emotions come and go. As you experienced last week already. The stress or pressure you’re feeling will pass, and you don’t need to act on it.

→ By acknowledging this, you can see the binge urge as a fleeting reaction, rather than something that has power over you. Waiting out the storm helps diminish its intensity.

03. Food Is Not a Solution: Remind yourself that food is the wried wrong solution we want to erase. When you’re triggered by stress or pressure, recognize that eating won’t fix anything.

→ Shifting the belief that food offers comfort to the idea that food is for nourishment & taste, with true appetite will help disconnect emotional eating patterns.

04. You Are Not Your Emotions: Understand that your feelings of stress, anxiety, or overwhelm don’t define who you are. You may be experiencing these emotions, but they don’t control you.

→ By separating yourself from your emotions (or “it”), you reduce their power to influence your actions, particularly around food. You have the power, the REAL you! :)

05. Empowerment Over Avoidance: Every time you resist the urge to binge, you’re reinforcing your strength and weaken the wire in your brain. Instead of seeing it as deprivation, view it as an empowering act: each time you don’t act, you are working on breaking the wire for good and thus erasing the urge altogether.

→ By breaking the habit, you’re choosing long-term well-being over short-term relief, which is a victory worth celebrating. Each small victory rewires your brain toward healthier responses.