The warmest of welcomes to you at a time in your life where such a challenge is really pushing you to develop.
I can relate to where you're coming from. I'm a gal who's a major emotional eater who hasn't quite mastered overcoming it but I'm working hard to get through it. I think the first thing is to make sense of why we overeat and there can be a variety of reasons. For me, there are 3 and I'll get the first out of the way really quickly. With sleep apnea, it's about purely physical cravings. The body craves energy and it'll look for it any way it can get it. While sleep is meant to help restore energy, SA not only gets in the way of that process, it's also an exhausting condition. High energy foods and drinks with loads of sugar and/or lots of caffeine will typically be the reason for the addiction here. This is what a SA expert told me. I'm currently managing that angle with SA treatment. I've also employed a dietician, who's helping me better understand the physical reasons behind the need to eat certain foods.
Mental/physical cravings will be different because we can be looking to change the energy of our emotions.
We're craving the feeling of a different type of emotion. From a chemical viewpoint, it can be about craving the feeling of dopamine if we're down or we can be looking to reduce cortisol levels in stressful times which can also feel great. From a less chemical and more natural angle, you could say cola=satisfaction, chocolate=peace, chips etc=happiness, take-away=bliss, the best chicken parma on the face of the earth=heaven on earth😁 and so on. While I appreciate the chemical aspects of how we work, sometimes it pays to simplify and talk about feelings and not the feeling of chemical shifts in the body. The eating aspect, for me, is about quick fixes or quick emotional shifts. It can take a lot of hard work to develop a healthy sense of satisfaction in life, sense of peace, sense of happiness, bliss, heaven on earth etc. Quick fixes or quick highs get in the way of that kind of natural self development and self understanding. Which leads me to...
The soulful reasons or the 'soul food' aspect. When life becomes depressing (for whatever reason/s), we can eat so as not to feel what's soul destroying. While it can be time to naturally develop into our next stage of life, not knowing how to move forward can have us stuck in a room in front of Netflix binging on what lifts our spirits (including chips and chocolate). While we can be heading in the direction of our supermarket junk food aisle, we could consider heading in the direction of a guidance counselor or some other guide who can point us in the right direction regarding a more fulfilling path in life.
I know, it's hard, not going for the quick fixes/quick highs, especially if we've become addicted to that way of managing. No matter what type of energy in motion (e-motion) we're after or why we're after it, it can be so hard to manage and master our own energy at times. Better understanding ourself can be the first step toward self mastery.🙂
