Emotional eating is an issue many of us struggle with.
A healthy habit, that we address in the PathWay 2 Wholeness Bible Study, related to this topic would be ‘Eat Nutritious Foods.’ Three related spiritual exercises would be – ‘Receive God’s Love in Your Heart,’ ‘Trust God,’ and ‘Let Go of Anger, Bitterness and Resentment.’
It’s pretty hard to eat really well and nutritious foods if our heart is not right with others, ourself or God. The tendency that many of us have is to turn to comfort foods, or salty and sweet foods to soothe our souls if our emotions are a wreck!
Anxiety (fear) and anger are two emotions that may drive us towards unhealthy – emotional – eating or to some other unhealthy or sinful activity like excessive internet use, pornography, alcohol, etc.
And the best and biblical way to handle these ‘toxic’ emotions is to turn them over to God… to lay them at the feet of Jesus. To ask Him to help you work through the uncomfortable emotions and the situations that have led to any such emotions. We need God’s help and grace and love to work in us to handle such emotions in a healthy and appropriate way. That’s His design for us.
Being aware of emotional eating is the first step. The second is to be fully aware of the emotion(s) that are at the root of the behavior. Then God would want us to go to Him in confession and prayer asking Him to help us address the emotions that are at the root of the unhealthy behavior – emotional eating in this case.
God wants us to open our hearts wide and invite Him to pour His truth and love into us so that these will replace the toxic emotions and the resulting emotional eating.
“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Provers 3:5
This is God’s way!
Hope this reminder and encouragement helps a bit. 🙂
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I want to apply this article because I just lost weight for first time (45 pounds) through a support group (foodaddicts.org saves lives and works great, but I didn’t want to be with them forever).
I’d like to loose 12 pounds because I gained that extra after leaving the support group. My goal is to be able to apply the principles of this article instead of being in the support group. I recommend the support group for anyone, but I just didn’t like it as a forever program for me. So I’m going to start journaling my emotions, I’m not normally don’t Journal about my emotions but I can see that I have to in order to lose this weight because I continue to eat emotionally.
Congratulations Catherina ….for recognizing how much your emotions may be impacting your eating… what you and when and how much you eat. You might want to check out this program as it would help you get down to issues of the heart that may be contributing to your emotions. https://www.faithandhealthconnection.org/landing/pathway-2-wholeness/
Blessings to you! Dale
Great article about emotional eating! We must get our hearts right with God whether or not we need to lose weight….but especially if we are undertaking such a major endeavor. Blessings!