Overeating and Emotional Eating

Unhappy with the results of your attempts to lose weight or eat healthy, you’ve been trying even more rigid diets or exercise plans to regain a sense of control, but it seems to elude you. It’s starting to feel like food is your enemy.

On the outside, you seem to have it all together. You’re productive at work, you have good friends and family, you pay your bills on time… you adult so well most days! You try to live a healthy lifestyle because it’s important to you. But lately there’s a nagging worry that if you let go just a little… if you don’t count every calorie… if you aren’t clean eating at every meal… if you aren’t burning off a certain number of calories daily or weekly… things will spiral out of control.

Your concerns about healthy eating and exercise are turning into an obsession. It’s hard to know if this is a problem, though, since everyone around you seems to be doing the same thing. But you know deep down that life has more to offer than endless opportunities to obsess about your appearance. You don’t just want to be remembered for how well you counted carbs. You just wish this was easier.

Others sometimes complain that you don’t hang out with them anymore. You say no to social invitations because it’s easier to stay home, where you have more control over what you eat. You sometimes say no because you need to work out, and there’s no extra time for anything else. More often lately you just don’t feel like doing anything, so you stay in and soothe yourself with food.

You’re frustrated that you so often turn to food to cope with uncomfortable emotions. But nothing else works as well, and trying to get to the root of this on your own is just too hard! All you want is a normal, healthy relationship with food and your body, but you don’t know how to get there.

You don’t think you have an eating disorder, but you just can’t stop obsessing!

You’ve looked around online and can’t figure it out. The symptoms of Binge Eating Disorder or Anorexia and Bulimia don’t quite fit, but you’re bothered by your behavior. You’re beginning to wonder if you have a food addiction or sugar addiction. Or maybe orthorexia? You’ve read articles that describe these, and you can certainly relate.

You want to change. You’re ready to get help. But where do you go?

How working with a counselor or therapist in Texas can help

I have 20 years of experience as a therapist helping adults figure out how to improve their lives. As a Certified Eating Disorders Specialist in Plano, TX, I also understand the counseling methods supported by research to best treat eating disorders, overeating and emotional eating, chronic dieting, food addiction, orthorexia, body image problems, as well as anxiety and depression, which are often related.

I guide you toward looking at your eating behaviors from a different perspective than you’re probably used to. I firmly believe that your body is not the problem, and it’s not something that needs to be fixed. The commonly recommended advice (count calories, limit food groups, exercise more) can be part of the problem, not a solution. These old approaches often cause self-blame, despair, and more intense urges to turn to food to cope. These approaches also have short-lived success, if at all, for the vast majority of people.

Instead, we will explore your triggers for overeating and emotional eating, and generally feeling controlled by food. If you want to stop overeating and emotional eating, you must learn to trust your body’s signals to eat and learn more effective skills for self-soothing and coping with stress.

You CAN learn better ways of solving problems than overeating, emotional eating, and chronic dieting!  

Clients who work with me begin to feel more peaceful about their body and their relationship with food. They find new ways to manage the emotions that led them to food to numb, distract, or fill a void. They discover new and improved ways of taking care of themselves, making decisions based on self-care rather than punishment or obligation.

If you are ready to explore how counseling can help you end overeating and emotional eating, contact me at 469-850-2420 or danesa@danesadaniel.com to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation. My office is in Plano, Texas, and conveniently located near Frisco, Allen, McKinney, Prosper, The Colony, Little Elm, Addison, North Dallas, and Richardson.