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How to Overcome Emotional Eating
How to Overcome Emotional Eating – 4 Tips To Let It Go For Good
Emotional eating can begin in childhood when food becomes your parents’ favourite tools of distraction and reward, wielded in response to various emotions and behaviours that you exhibited. As a baby, they silenced your cries with a bottle. As a child, they rewarded your good behaviour with candy, snacks, ice cream and various sugary desserts. As an adult, you may find yourself eating certain junk foods just because it reminds you of some happy childhood memory. – Huffpost
- Do you eat more when you are feeling stressed?
- Do you eat when you are not hungry or feeling full?
- Do you eat to feel better? To soothe & calm yourself when sad, bored, etc?
- Do you reward yourself with food often?
- Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?
How to Overcome Emotional Eating – Difference Between Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger
Physical Hunger
- comes on gradually
- can wait
- is open to options – lots of things sound good
- stops when you are full
- eating to satisfy this hunger doesn’t make you feel bad
Emotional Hunger
- comes on suddenly
- feels like it needs to be satisfied instantly
- craves specific comfort foods
- isn’t satisfied with a full stomach
- triggers feelings of guilt, powerlessness and shame
How to Overcome Emotional Eating – Causes of Emotional Eating
- Stress – cortisol (stress hormone) triggers cravings for salty, sweet and high-fat foods – giving you a burst of energy and pleasure.
- Silencing uncomfortable emotions – numbing yourself with food so you can avoid feelings you would rather not have – anger, resentment, anxious, sad, lonely, shame.
- Boredom or emptiness – Fills a void for a short period of time.
- Childhood habit – rewards, nostalgia these can carry over to adult life.
- Social – overeat just because it’s there.
What To Do?
1.How to Overcome Emotional Eating – Identify Your Triggers – Keep a food and mood diary to track these. Identify them then backtrack.
What you ate or wanted to eat? What happened to set this up? How did you feel before you ate? What you felt as you were eating? How did you feel afterwards?
2. Find Other Ways To Feed Your Feelings – beyond food to meet your emotional needs. The keys to success are moving (dance, bike, swim, walk…), changing your focus (outside of yourself with music, friend, helping others, etc) and engaging in gratitude (get optimistic) are some universal tools.
Ideas are – Exhausted –> take a hot bath or spa, allow self to have quick nap, lay in sun outdoors & listen to nature; Lonely or down –> ring a fun friend, go for a walk with a friend or your dog, watch a comedy movie, crank up fun music; Anxious –> dance to your favourite song, go for a walk, do 15 minutes of yoga, take it out with a friend.
3. Pause When Cravings Hit – Take 5 before you mindlessly part-take – go outside and skip for 5 minutes, dance like a maniac to your favourite song, drink 2 glasses water, 30 sit-ups. This will interrupt your mindless pattern so you can exert your option to choose.
Remember it is key to learn to accept your feelings even the bad ones and remember you have control over your emotions…..a choice in each and every moment. An emotion lasts for 45 seconds you can choose to let it pass or hold onto it for 1 hour, 1 day, 1 year, a lifetime.
Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable emotions they can be scary but in reality, when we don’t obsess or suppress them, even the most difficult feeling subside relatively quickly and lose their power to control our attention.
Instead, opt for being present in the moment – feel it, smell it, hear it, see it. In opening up to our emotions, our lives become richer as they help us discover our deepest desires, fears, frustrations and the things that make us fulfilled and happy.
4. Prevention With Healthy Habits – Being physically strong, relaxed, well rested enables you to better handle what life throws at you. Living in overwhelm and exhaustion will send you straight to the fridge or pantry.
• Daily exercise – reduces stress, enhances mood, boosts energy levels, increases fitness
• Daily relaxation – schedule in 30 mins each day to relax, decompress, unwind. Recharge your batteries, break from responsibilities
• Connect with other – social activities, close relationships are essential to protect you from the negative effects of stress.
• Get at least 8 hours sleep – lack of sleep is linked to consuming more food and reduced satiety signals, plus increased stress levels.
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