One of the biggest obstacle to weight loss for many people is emotional eating.
Emotional eating affects most everyone to different degrees. For some of us it is something that occurs occasionally and for others it rules our day. Giving way from good intentions to overwhelming urges to eat. The good news is the emotional eating is a learned behavior so no matter how out of control we may feel right now when it comes to food, you have the ability to unlearn it. It takes a little time and effort but the pay off is huge.
When you overcome emotional eating you will no longer be at the mercy of your emotions and derailed from your weight loss efforts. You will be able to deal with feelings and stress that normally send you to the candy machine or fast food restaurant. It is an incredibly freeing experience and once you understand how to do it, it becomes easier and easier each time. So how do we start to overcome emotional eating that leads to overeating and often an eating binge?
The first step is to start to observe your eating patterns. When you first start this it can be difficult, because you often find that your emotions and thoughts are triggering your “need” or want for food.
We crave certain foods when these feelings, emotions and stresses occur because they effect our pleasure center in our brain and the food becomes an instant distraction and you avoid the feeling that was triggered. It could be as simple as a comment from your spouse or the stress of getting your kids off to school in the morning that triggers your emotional eating reaction.
Taking the time to start observing and to journal when, what and why you are eating can really be the beginning to turning the emotional hunger switch off. If you start to observe yourself and your patterns, you can then start to work on new behaviors to put these in place instead of eating. When you learn to resist the food and replace the it with a new one your brain will start to process the information differently and instead of calming yourself with food it will start to substitute in the other behavior using it to give your body the time to calm itself without the use of food.
This can take some effort and some patience. If you continue to eat even after you observe the feelings that are coming up, it’s OK, so don’t beat yourself up. Just observe yourself and what you are feeling. Keep the journal for the first week or two and start to get a picture of when and what is triggering you. Next, think of some other healthier behaviors you can substitute for eating. Like call a friend, take a nap, reading a fitness magazine, go outside for some fresh air, you get the picture. Just pick things you enjoy and will give your body and mind something to do other than eat. Your goal is to disrupt the learned habit of eating for distraction and engaging the pleasure center in the brain with food. After about a week of observing start to sneak in some healthier substitutes instead of food.
Action Step: Start to observe, what you eat and when you eat in your journal. If you know what is pushing you towards food then write it down, but if you don’t that’s OK. Sometimes things aren’t as transparent as we think and it may take hours or even days before we figure out what was bothering us.
So, for now just write down what you observe. Make a list of things you can do that would make you feel better that are unrelated to food. When we emotionally eat we often do so not only to avoid certain feelings that make us uncomfortable but to calm ourselves down both physically and mentally.
Think of some things you can do in place of eating. When I did this exercise I found that I usually was upset about something as well as tired. I thought if I could just lay down for ten or fifteen minutes it would help. I would never give myself permission to do that so I ate instead. Once I did give myself permission I found that I was able to calm down and re-energize in a way that did not include food and it worked almost immediately.
I found the first day I did this I layed down 3 times for 10 minutes or if I couldn’t I just closed my eyes at my desk for that time. I did some deep breathing as well. I never would have thought it would have worked so well but it did.
Later on when I did research I found that this method was in line with how our brain works and how our body responds to stress. So keep and open mind and just start with these 2 actions steps. Remember don’t expect perfection just keep an open mind and start a small, slight shift. You can do that.
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