Tips to help you avoid sabotaging your weight loss goals
Emotional Eating is something most of us do in variations. Turning to certain foods when we feel sad, angry or stressed is more common than not. We don’t always eat for the simple need to satisfy hunger. We also turn to food for comfort, stress relief, or as a reward. The unfortunate part of this behavior is that eating for emotional reasons doesn’t fix the actual emotional problems. Most times it makes you feel worse. Afterward, not only does the original emotional issue linger, but you also feel guilty for overeating. Here are some tips to help you learn to recognize emotional eating and begin to break free from the cycle.
1. Unawareness
Emotional eating can be a direct result of not being mindful of what or why you’re eating. Unconscious eating is when you’re done with your meal and you continue to pick at it, slowly eating the remaining portion that you intended to leave behind. It can also be putting chips or crackers or any other food in your mouth, just because it’s in front of you. Do you find yourself heading for the pantry after a stressful day? Do you grab the ice cream when your bored?
The solution? Try to be mindful of what and when you are eating. Stay aware of your triggers and avoid eating when you are facing them. Remember that food is food and emotions are emotions. Take five minutes before you indulge in the craving. Find something else to work through that craving and emotion.
2. Food as Your Only Pleasure
Often people claim that food is the only thing they have to look forward too. At the end of a long and hectic day, a big bowl of ice cream can be effective in temporarily soothing our exhausted, hard-working selves. Why? According to many sources sugars releases opiates in our brains. Opiates are the active ingredients in cocaine and heroin and many other narcotics. Breaking these habits can be like kicking a drug habit.
The solution? Find other ways to reward and soothe yourself besides food In order to truly give up emotional eating, you are also going to have to practice tolerating difficult feelings. Which leads to #3.
3. Inability to Tolerate Difficult Feelings
In our society at a young age we learn to avoid things that feel bad. Unfortunately, the ways we have found to distract ourselves from difficult feelings are not always in our best long term interest. Without the ability to tolerate life’s inevitable unpleasant feelings, you’re susceptible to emotional eating or other destructive behaviors.
The solution? Practice letting yourself experience difficult feelings. No one likes feeling stressed, mad, sad, rejected, and bored. Allowing yourself to feel the unpleasant emotions can be scary. You might even fear it to be like Pandora’s Box, once it’s open you won’t be able to close it. The truth is that when we just allow ourselves to feel the emotion without obsessing or suppressing them, they will subside relatively quickly. To do this you must be mindful of what you’re feeling and stay connected to your moment to moment experiences. This can help you reign in the urge and help prevent you from having to blunt your feelings with behaviors you’d like to stop – like eating.
4. Body Hate
Hating your body is one of the biggest factors in emotional eating. Negativity, shame and hatred rarely inspire people to make long-lasting great changes, especially when it comes to our bodies or our sense of self.
The solution? Avoid thinking or saying critical statements about your body. Try not to compare yourself to others or even yourself 20 years ago. This takes practice and consistency.
5. Physiology
Letting yourself get too hungry or too tired is the best way to leave yourself vulnerable to emotional eating. When your body is hungry or tired it sends strong messages to your brain that signal it to eat. Sometimes these signal are stronger than the strongest will power.
The solution? More sleep and regular consistent meals. Make those two things a priority. There is no way around it.
By learning to develop healthy lifestyle habits, recognizing and managing emotional problems without the use of food, you can achieve your weight management goals.
Tami Mungenast Personal Trainer & Nutrition Coach
