Jasmine is an exceptional Trauma-informed Emotional Eating Holistic Health and Wellness Coach who gracefully manages her roles as a dedicated mother, wife, and leader in various church ministries. Her journey is marked by notable accomplishments, such as co-authoring two Amazon number 1 Best-Selling books and attaining the esteemed title of a number 1 International best-seller.
As a woman entrepreneur, you're constantly facing new challenges, pushing boundaries, and balancing business with personal responsibilities. In these high-pressure moments, emotional eating or overeating can sometimes become a way to cope. The demands of running a business, managing a home, and fulfilling multiple roles can drive you to seek comfort in food, especially when you’re trying to avoid feelings of stress, fear, or overwhelm.
But what if instead of avoiding discomfort, you leaned into it? Embracing discomfort, while relying on God for strength, might be the key to overcoming emotional eating and stepping into the healthiest version of yourself. Instead of using food to fill emotional voids, you can turn to your faith and resilience to navigate difficult emotions.
In this article, we’ll explore why avoiding discomfort can keep you stuck in a cycle of emotional eating and how leaning into it, with God’s help, can break that cycle, build resilience, and bring peace to your relationship with food.
Why avoiding discomfort leads to emotional eating
Emotional eating is often an unconscious attempt to avoid uncomfortable emotions. When feelings like stress, anxiety, or exhaustion arise, food can become a temporary escape, a way to distract from or soothe the discomfort. But turning to food for emotional relief creates long-term problems:
Overeating: Eating to soothe emotions can lead to overconsumption, even when your body isn’t physically hungry, resulting in weight gain and health issues.
Increased guilt and shame: Emotional eating often leaves you feeling guilty or frustrated, adding more stress and creating a cycle of overeating.
Disconnection from your body: Relying on food to manage emotions can cause you to lose touch with your body’s natural hunger and fullness signals.
While food may provide temporary relief, it ultimately keeps you stuck in patterns that harm your body, soul, and spirit. Avoiding discomfort is like avoiding growth. Instead, leaning into that discomfort, with God's strength, can help you uncover what’s really driving those emotions, and free you from emotional eating.
Leaning into discomfort: A path to freedom
Leaning into discomfort doesn’t mean welcoming stress or anxiety. It means acknowledging those feelings, allowing them to surface, and seeking God’s wisdom and strength in dealing with them. By leaning into discomfort, you can break the hold emotional eating has over you and embrace a healthier, more peaceful relationship with food. Here’s how:
You build resilience: When you allow yourself to sit with uncomfortable emotions, you start to build emotional resilience, the ability to bounce back from challenges. With each instance of leaning into discomfort, you strengthen your capacity to handle future stress, relying on God's grace and guidance rather than food.
You reconnect with your body and spirit: Emotional eating often disconnects you from your body and leaves you relying on food for comfort. Leaning into discomfort helps you get back in tune with your body’s natural signals. Through prayer and mindful reflection, you can better understand whether you're eating for physical nourishment or emotional relief.
You lean on God for comfort, not food: As believers, we are called to cast our cares on God, who cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). Instead of turning to food in stressful moments, lean on God. Pray through your emotions, ask for strength to endure, and trust that He will guide you through the discomfort. In doing so, you open yourself to a deeper reliance on His strength rather than temporary fixes like food.
Leaning into discomfort and building resilience takes practice, but it’s a powerful step toward overcoming emotional eating and growing closer to God. Here are some strategies to help you navigate discomfort and develop a healthier relationship with food:
1. Recognize emotional triggers
The first step in overcoming emotional eating is to recognize what triggers it. Pay attention to the feelings or situations that make you reach for food. Are you turning to food when you're stressed, lonely, or frustrated? Once you identify these triggers, bring them to God in prayer, asking for guidance and strength to face them head-on.
2. Turn to scripture for comfort
When discomfort arises, turn to God’s Word for comfort. Scriptures like Philippians 4:6-7 remind us not to be anxious about anything, but to present our requests to God in prayer. Lean on verses that remind you of God’s love, provision, and grace. As you meditate on these truths, your desire for emotional comfort from food will diminish.
3. Practice mindful eating with prayer
Before eating, pause for a moment of prayer. Ask yourself: Am I truly hungry, or am I eating to avoid something? Invite God into that space. Ask Him to help you discern whether you need food or emotional support. By practicing mindful eating with prayer, you’ll cultivate greater awareness of your body’s needs and allow God to meet your emotional needs.
4. Embrace the discomfort with faith
When uncomfortable feelings surface, rather than pushing them away or reaching for food, bring them to God. Sit with your discomfort in prayer, trusting that God is using it to grow and strengthen you. Leaning into discomfort helps you confront the emotions driving your eating patterns and allows you to experience God’s healing in a deeper way.
5. Seek healthy coping strategies
Replace emotional eating with healthier, faith-based coping strategies. Turn to prayer, worship, or reading Scripture when you feel emotionally overwhelmed. Engaging in physical activity, journaling, or talking with a trusted friend can also help you process emotions in a healthier way.
6. Rely on your faith community for support
Surround yourself with fellow believers who can provide encouragement and accountability as you work to overcome emotional eating. Share your struggles with trusted friends or in a small group, and seek prayer support. Leaning on your faith community reminds you that you’re not walking this journey alone.
7. Retrain your mind with God’s truth
Emotional eating is often fueled by negative thought patterns like self-criticism or fear of failure. Challenge these thoughts with the truth of God’s Word. Scripture encourages us to renew our minds (Romans 12:2), and by doing so, we can break free from the lies that drive emotional eating. When negative thoughts arise, replace them with affirmations of who you are in Christ.
As a woman entrepreneur, the path to success is paved with moments of discomfort. But instead of avoiding those moments by turning to food, lean into them, trusting God to strengthen and guide you. Embracing discomfort allows you to build resilience, reconnect with your body and spirit, and rely more deeply on God’s grace.
When you acknowledge your emotions and face them with God’s help, you’ll find that emotional eating loses its grip. You’ll not only achieve greater peace with food but also discover deeper spiritual growth as you learn to trust in God’s comfort, not food, to carry you through challenging times.
Remember, God is with you in every step of your entrepreneurial journey. By leaning into discomfort with faith, prayer, and support, you’ll become the healthiest version of yourself emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Trust that He will guide you toward freedom from emotional eating and empower you to live a life of balance, health, and purpose.
Jasmine Kelly-Stephens, IIN Holistic Health and Wellness Coach
Jasmine is an exceptional Trauma-informed Emotional Eating Holistic Health and Wellness Coach who gracefully manages her roles as a dedicated mother, wife, and leader in various church ministries. Her journey is marked by notable accomplishments, such as co-authoring two Amazon Number 1 Best-Selling books and attaining the esteemed title of a Number 1 International best-seller.
Jasmine's personal story spans several decades, interwoven with the trials of comfort, stress, and emotional eating. This deeply personal struggle propels her unwavering commitment to addressing the emotional eating crisis, and guiding women towards healing, restoration, and liberation. At the heart of her mission is the empowerment of women, helping them liberate themselves from the chains of shame and guilt linked to emotional eating, all while drawing on her expertise in trauma-informed care. Through this transformative process, women rediscover their relationship with food and their bodies, embracing a journey of self-love and acceptance that brings forth renewed energy, freedom, and confidence to fulfill their divine callings within the Kingdom.
Jasmine firmly believes that the healing experienced by women extends its positive ripples outward, fostering healthier relationships within families and communities. This ripple effect creates a transformative impact for everyone involved. While Jasmine offers personalized coaching tailored for Christian women entrepreneurs, her passion knows no bounds. Actively spreading the message of transformation through speaking engagements and workshops, she aims to reach anyone open to the journey toward healing and well-being.
