How to gain control over your eating habits

Do you feel that food has control over you instead of being in control over your eating habits and food? Would you love to live a life where you have a relaxed and positive relationship with food? One where you eat what you want, when you want, eating intuitively, only you can say no when you've had enough. You know the amounts of food your body likes and you naturally like healthy foods. 

I've helped many people transition from having disordered eating to having a healthier relationship with food, so I'm telling you it's possible. 

What does control with food mean?

The concept of 'control' is believing you can exercise restraint or influence your behaviour around food. To control is to have power over food. Power over yourself to say no to compulsive eating and no to delicious-tasting junk food and sugary high-fat foods. 

The question is, why do you want to feel in control around food?

Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to get healthier? Do you want to feel better? Is it that you don't want food to take over your life anymore like it does now? 

If you want to be in control, it would suggest that you feel out of control around food or not in control on some level.

What are some common signs of being out of control around food?

Do you experience any of the following? 

• You continue eating even when you are full up.
• You can't resist eating food when it is on offer, even if you are not hungry.
• You make poor food choices like snacking on sweets, chocolate and sugary food for no apparent reason.
• You experience intense food cravings and nothing abates it except binge eating. Binge eating is eating an unusually large amount of food in a short time, in a frenzied way. Many people report that they feel zoned out whilst bingeing.
• Whenever you feel sad, down or angry your favourite foods make you feel better.
• You can't get enough, or you are fixated on certain foods, like chocolate. It might feel like a food addiction because you can't stop eating them. 

Factors that influence our eating behaviours

It is hard to see what influences how we eat when we can only see a result that we do not like. The result might be body dissatisfaction, weight gain, and uneasy feelings about food. 

Your eating habits are a way of getting your needs met. This could be physical as well as psychological. 

There is a reason why we are eating the way we are. To help you feel in control around food, it helps to understand what is causing your eating patterns. 

Factors that could be contributing to you feeling out of control with food:

A traumatic event

Either in childhood or adulthood. Examples are death, loss of a job, accident, illness, change in circumstances like moving home or divorce, and sexual assault. The event could be tough and traumatic to get through. You might find yourself turning to food to help you cope, or long after the event if you have not processed the event food might be a welcoming coping strategy. 

Difficulties in childhood

These are ongoing difficulties like abuse, neglect, abandonment, bullying, psychological abuse, emotional neglect, and authoritarian parents. This can be extremely difficult to navigate as a child and profoundly affects us growing up. We might turn to food for comfort because it is there. 

No boundaries

There were no guidelines or boundaries set with food for you as a child. You could help yourself to food whenever you wanted. You were not fed healthy food. There was no regularity with eating. You were given lots of ultra-processed food. Mealtimes were a source of stress.

Pressure

You encountered pressure to perform. You have to be the best at what you are doing. Aiming to be a gold medal winner. You or others might have put pressure on you. You may be a perfectionist. This reflects in your eating, that if you are not eating perfectly, you feel like a failure and there is a huge amount of shame. 

Are you emotionally eating? 

Emotional eating is using food unconsciously as a way to manage uncomfortable emotions. 

You may not notice that you are even feeling any negative emotions. All you see is that you are eating too many unhealthy foods and have too many unhealthy habits. Feeling out of control or not in control and emotional eating go hand in hand. 

When we are not noticing our hunger, not eating when we are hungry but eating regardless, this is called emotional hunger. Food fills an emotional gap. 

To understand our relationship with food, we must understand why we eat the way we do and what is behind our eating habits. We want to move from a place of judgement with ourselves, to one of understanding. Being curious about why we eat the way we do. This is building a healthy relationship with ourselves and food. 

How can hypnotherapy help with control around food?

Firstly, let's address some myths about hypnotherapy...

• A therapist will not read out a magic script and ta-da suddenly you are free from your eating disorder. 
• You are not asleep. You are fully aware of what is being said and can open your eyes and come back into the room at any time. 
• One session of hypnotherapy and suddenly you are all better. 

Here's how a hypnotherapist can help you:

• They can help you to investigate what is behind your emotional eating. 
• They can help you to get in touch with your emotional hunger, so you can know what emotional needs you have that are not being met, and that you are trying to meet with food. 
• They can help you to relax which means your ego relaxes. This part of the brain wants to keep you in the same patterns. 
• They can also help you by asking you introspective questions and help you to reflect and form new lifestyle habits. 

Questions and tips to help you gain control of food

A question to ask is what does being in control of food look like to you? 

Get clear on how you would like to be around food. Then ask are your expectations realistic? 

We often have an idea of being this virtuous person around food, only eating healthy foods, having healthy habits around food and enjoying healthy lifestyle habits. We think all of this will bring us to our ideal weight over time. 'Ideal' is what we think is ideal for us, which may or may not fall into what a health professional might class as a healthy weight for us. 

When we do not adhere to the food rules we set out for ourselves, we think we have failed. We tend to have an all-or-nothing mindset, which tells us 'Oh well, I have blown it now, I might as well have what I want,' to which we go all out and eat our favourite foods that we have denied ourselves at the risk of weight gain. 

Mindful eating

All change starts with awareness. Becoming more aware of your eating habits, you can start with mindful eating. This is paying attention to your habits. Noticing when you reach out for food and your feelings about food. 

Some people find keeping a food journal helpful. We are not just tracking your food intake, we are trying to find diet patterns. You are tracking your emotions when you go to eat, whilst eating and after eating. Noticing the patterns and similarities. 

Permit yourself to eat your favourite foods

To curb being out of control with food, we often ban ourselves from eating our favourite foods. This leaves us feeling deprived and can lead to a binge eating episode. Allowing yourself some sugary drinks now and again, or a visit to fast-food restaurants can help you mentally whilst you transition to healthier foods. 

We want to get away from cutting everything unhealthy out at once and move to slowly making healthier food choices. We are moving away from rigid food rules. We are relaxing the rules to allow us to form habits that are sustainable and positive for us. 

Feel your hunger cues

Eating a large amount of food in one sitting or constantly picking at food often has nothing to do with hunger. We may not feel hungry because we are eating regularly. Some people fear feeling hungry as it could be too uncomfortable. 

Hunger is your body's signal to say you need fuel. Learn to start feeling your hunger and sit with it for a short while. You are teaching your body that a small amount of hunger is OK and learning to move into intuitive eating. 

Emotional hunger is not based on hunger at all. Rather it is a short intense craving for an emotional need to be met by food. 

Relax

Stress can be a contributory factor to binge eating and compulsive eating. We can use food as a way to help us calm down or to suppress any negative emotions. 

Hypnotherapy can help you to relax not just physically but mentally. We need to allow our brains to pause, and slow down so we can become curious and introspective about the way we eat and why we eat the way we do. 

Seek specialist help

Seeking help for an eating disorder is one of the best investments you can make for yourself. There are many unconscious contributing factors keeping you stuck. You don't know what they are because that is the purpose of the unconscious. It keeps pain hidden from us allowing us to continue with our lives. 

Your disordered eating is a symptom. It is the therapist's job with your help to find out what in the unconscious is keeping you stuck. When you unravel it, your eating becomes relaxed and calm and you have a positive relationship with yourself and food.