Health Tip: Avoid Emotional Eating

(HealthDay News) -- When feeling frazzled, many people turn to food for comfort. Stress eating, also called emotional eating, can occur because stress triggers certain food cravings.

The Harvard Medical School mentions these alternatives to emotional eating:

Meditate, which may help you ease stress and improve impulse control.Engage in regular exercise, especially in forms such as yoga or Tai chi.Seek support from friends and loved ones when stress takes over.Get rid of high-fat, high-sugar foods so you're not tempted when under stress.

-- Diana Kohnle
Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Discomfort Food: Avoiding Emotional Eating

During weight loss in Chandler or Scottsdale, prevent overeating by controlling emotional hunger

Hunger isn’t the only thing that causes us to eat. On bad days, when responsibilities seem to pile up without reprieve, our emotions can get the better of us. When we feel anxious, depressed or even bored, it can weaken our resolve to stick with healthy habits, leading to an unfortunate bout of overeating.

As you lose weight in Chandler or Scottsdale, you’ll learn how to change many aspects of your lifestyle. You’ll begin exercising and eating a more nutritious diet under your weight loss doctor’s supervision. Emotional eating is a common problem during weight loss, but is just one more unhealthy habit you can learn to break during your program.

Though emotional eating can make you feel helpless against your emotions, you can find ways to keep it from sabotaging your diet. Because emotional eating is often an unconscious reaction to stress or negative emotions, the first step in breaking this habit is to recognize the difference between emotional eating and genuine, physical hunger.

Emotional hunger will:

Come on suddenly. Physical hunger develops slowly and will never take the form of a sudden craving. Emotional hunger will make you feel like you need to eat the food you crave immediately, while true hunger feels less urgent.Crave a particular food. When we’re truly hungry, our minds are open to possibilities; when we’re emotionally hungry, we tend to seek solace in specific unhealthy comfort foods.Make us eat beyond fullness. Even when we feel full, emotional hunger can cause us to keep eating.Make us feel guilty. You shouldn’t ever regret a healthy meal, but will likely look back on emotional eating choices with regret.

For each of us, there are certain situations that are guaranteed to set us off. One of the best ways to keep emotional hunger at bay is to recognize when it’s most likely to appear. If you notice the signs of emotional hunger above, take a minute to think about what may have been the trigger. By identifying the situations most likely to cause you to eat emotionally, you can stay careful during potentially problematic times.

When you begin feeling emotional hunger or enter a situation likely to trigger it, take control of the situation by:

Diverting your attention. Get your mind off everything that has to do with food. Get out of the kitchen and go for a walk, read a book or call a friend. Do something productive or engaging that will take your mind completely off your cravings. You can even make a list of alternate activities and consult it any time you feel an emotional eating urge.Eating something healthy. Though

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Stop Emotional Eating. Motivation for Weight Loss.

Emotional eating is a sure ticket to unhappiness and fatness. Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but it's true. I've struggled with food addiction long before I knew there was such a thing. If you've ever thought (or acted) like food was your friend, you might want to examine your habits.

Uncontrolled eating, food addiction, and sugar addiction are a common problem. So common, in fact, they seem "normal." De-stressing by wolfing down some chips or McDonalds, eating tons of sweets during down times, and believing in the pseudo-power of the chocolate/love relationship is NOT NORMAL. There is another way!

My years of yo-yo dieting were simply the result of emotional eating that I couldn't control. I never even knew it was a problem. I would go to the kitchen for snacks when I wasn't even hungry, or have a binge after diet stint and I would think to myself, "I was just stressed. I'll do better next time." But the diet stints became shorter and the binging periods became longer, until I was eating crap all the time. I couldn't see the cycle I had created. I couldn't understand why I just couldn't control my eating, when it seemed everyone else in the world could.

Finally, one day, I decided to just sit for a few moments and get down to the deeper part of me. I asked myself why chocolate mattered so much to me. I asked myself if chocolate served some purpose for me, or if it was symbolic of anything I needed. I just got quiet and listened. And, lo and behold, the answers came.

For me, chocolate was the first issue I had to deal with. And it was even difficult for me to admit it was a problem. What I learned about myself is that chocolate was love in my subconscious mind. My grandparents comforted me with chocolate as a child. My husband used it to woo me. I would eat it when I went out with my friends to share some laughs. I would use it as a pain reliever during my time of the month. When my husband started working tons of hours, I used chocolate as my company at night.

Hitting rock bottom with the yo-yo dieting forced me to look for permanent solutions. I just got over having to deal with the struggle all the time. It was sucking the life out of me.

I firmly believe the solution to every problem is already within us. We just have to ask, be still, and listen. The first step in stopping emotional eating is to go within and find out the reason you're self-sabotaging. What emotions or situations are you using food or sugar to cover up or soothe? Once you know why, you can begin to deal with the actual issue, instead of putting a band-aid over it.

For me, I had to admit my loneliness and find ways to constructively deal with that. I also had to train my mind to believe that food does not equal love and is NOT a necessity to have a good time. I can go out and enjoy life without a crutch.

Food truly is fuel, not comfort, and I have made that my mantra. Food is fuel. Food is fuel. Sure, crappy food would taste good, but it'll make my machine run and look like crap. If I sincerely love and care about my well-being, I'll take care of myself and strive to live a free and healthy life.

This is a simple, but not easy process. Self-discovery and actual transformation hurts a little - all growth does. But, if you truly want to be free, you've got to do it. Here are the six steps to overcome emotional eating, put as simply as I know how:

1. Ask yourself "why"
2. Be still
3. Listen to the answers
4. Understand the deeper reasoning
5. Deal constructively with the underlying issues
6. Live in freedom

Too simple, you're thinking? Yeah, no one wants it to be that simple. They want it to be complicated, to help them hide behind labels, excuses, and disorders. But the truth, the real truth, is always simple. Just like no one wants to accept that eating healthily and exercising is the only way to permanently lose weight.

Go within, find your answer.
Know that you have the power to overcome your issues.
Believe you can succeed.
See you on the other side!

 

How to Permanently Stop Obsessing about Food

That Time of The Month: The Media's Lies about Chocolate Addiction and Women

Sweet Substitutes

Is it Possible to Live Without Ever Eating Junk Food Again?

View the original article here

Stop Emotional Eating. Motivation for Weight Loss.

Emotional eating is a sure ticket to unhappiness and fatness. Sorry if that sounds insensitive, but it's true. I've struggled with food addiction long before I knew there was such a thing. If you've ever thought (or acted) like food was your friend, you might want to examine your habits.

Uncontrolled eating, food addiction, and sugar addiction are a common problem. So common, in fact, they seem "normal." De-stressing by wolfing down some chips or McDonalds, eating tons of sweets during down times, and believing in the pseudo-power of the chocolate/love relationship is NOT NORMAL. There is another way!

My years of yo-yo dieting were simply the result of emotional eating that I couldn't control. I never even knew it was a problem. I would go to the kitchen for snacks when I wasn't even hungry, or have a binge after diet stint and I would think to myself, "I was just stressed. I'll do better next time." But the diet stints became shorter and the binging periods became longer, until I was eating crap all the time. I couldn't see the cycle I had created. I couldn't understand why I just couldn't control my eating, when it seemed everyone else in the world could.

Finally, one day, I decided to just sit for a few moments and get down to the deeper part of me. I asked myself why chocolate mattered so much to me. I asked myself if chocolate served some purpose for me, or if it was symbolic of anything I needed. I just got quiet and listened. And, lo and behold, the answers came.

For me, chocolate was the first issue I had to deal with. And it was even difficult for me to admit it was a problem. What I learned about myself is that chocolate was love in my subconscious mind. My grandparents comforted me with chocolate as a child. My husband used it to woo me. I would eat it when I went out with my friends to share some laughs. I would use it as a pain reliever during my time of the month. When my husband started working tons of hours, I used chocolate as my company at night.

Hitting rock bottom with the yo-yo dieting forced me to look for permanent solutions. I just got over having to deal with the struggle all the time. It was sucking the life out of me.

I firmly believe the solution to every problem is already within us. We just have to ask, be still, and listen. The first step in stopping emotional eating is to go within and find out the reason you're self-sabotaging. What emotions or situations are you using food or sugar to cover up or soothe? Once you know why, you can begin to deal with the actual issue, instead of putting a band-aid over it.

For me, I had to admit my loneliness and find ways to constructively deal with that. I also had to train my mind to believe that food does not equal love and is NOT a necessity to have a good time. I can go out and enjoy life without a crutch.

Food truly is fuel, not comfort, and I have made that my mantra. Food is fuel. Food is fuel. Sure, crappy food would taste good, but it'll make my machine run and look like crap. If I sincerely love and care about my well-being, I'll take care of myself and strive to live a free and healthy life.

This is a simple, but not easy process. Self-discovery and actual transformation hurts a little - all growth does. But, if you truly want to be free, you've got to do it. Here are the six steps to overcome emotional eating, put as simply as I know how:

1. Ask yourself "why"
2. Be still
3. Listen to the answers
4. Understand the deeper reasoning
5. Deal constructively with the underlying issues
6. Live in freedom

Too simple, you're thinking? Yeah, no one wants it to be that simple. They want it to be complicated, to help them hide behind labels, excuses, and disorders. But the truth, the real truth, is always simple. Just like no one wants to accept that eating healthily and exercising is the only way to permanently lose weight.

Go within, find your answer.
Know that you have the power to overcome your issues.
Believe you can succeed.
See you on the other side!

 

How to Permanently Stop Obsessing about Food

That Time of The Month: The Media's Lies about Chocolate Addiction and Women

Sweet Substitutes

Is it Possible to Live Without Ever Eating Junk Food Again?

View the original article here