How to Stop Emotional Eating
How to stop emotional eating involves an understanding of why you are using food as a comfort. Emotional eating is an unhealthy relationship with food. Several people do not use food for the nutritional value or the energy that it provides, but they turn to food like a best friend to comfort them when they have worries, stressors, or bored.
It is so simple to know the reasons why people find comfort in food, it is always available night or day, it never judges you, it never turns you down or turns away, and it makes you feel temporarily really good.
Food does not cure anxiety, or any other emotional issues, but it does offer that temporary relief of feeling stressed. Eating carbohydrates, and overloading on sugary food provides you with a boost of feel good hormones. The problem is that food is not a long term fix for anxiety, or stress, and it just adds more health issues, and weight gain.
The same food an obese person uses for comfort is also associated with yo-yo dieting, because once the stress has diminished, the person usually feels guilty for eating foods that were not on their diet plan, and they start a new diet.
This process is repeated as they lose, and gain weight, damaging their metabolism, becoming insulin resistant, and setting themselves up for the expectation that their diet will fail them yet again.
Signs of an emotional eater.
- You all of a sudden get hungry and have to find something to eat.
- Crave carbohydrates
when you have had an emotional day.
- Run to the nearest vending machine after a confrontation of some sort.
- Want to eat even if you are full.
- Feel a calm after eating a candy bar or some chips.
- You feel absent when you are eating.
- You are filled with regret and remorse for eating to much.
How does a person heal from emotional eating?
- Learn ways to adapt a healthy relationship with food.
- Be realistic about what is going on around you.
- Put positive thoughts in place of the negative ones you are thinking.
- Get out and meet people, make friends instead of being alone.
- Take care of problems immediately instead of letting them fester. This will keep the stress and anxiety at a mimimum.
- Instead of eating, try reading a book, take a long relaxing bath, or play a video game to occupy your mind when your stress, anxious, or lonely.
- Journal your feelings. Sometimes just expressing your anxiety or fears helps you minimize the stressors in your life.
- Exercise relieves anxiety.
- Go outside, and take in some fresh air, sometimesyou just need a break from a stressful situation.
- Find a weight loss online community.
- Discover a new hobby, and create something new and fun in your life instead of turning to food.
- Try yoga, meditation, or try one of the hypnotic tapes that are so popular.
Tired of Being Tired?
The question still lies in our minds wondering how to stop being an emotional eater. I believe it would be a lifestyle change of stepping out of your comfort zone and getting out and enjoying life. Anxiety gets the best of a lot of us in this world. We just need to find something to replace the anxious feeling, and not rely on food. Lood for the good things in life, they are always there if you want them to be. It sometimes feels like stress, but it is just a part of everyday life. We can control how much stress is good for us without causeing heartaches, heahaches, weight gain and tons of health issues. Life should be so much more than a mortgage payment, or a job.
Junp on the train to a healthier lifestyle, sit back, look at the clouds and feel the wind. Life was meant to be enjoyed, so relish the life that you have been given.
How to stop emotional eating is all up to you. Food is not always the answer, and the sooner you stop to feel the sun warming on your face, or the wind blowing, and notice the clouds floating over your head, the faster you will realize you can control the crazy cycle of emotional eating. Slow down, and enjoy this moment, because this moment is all anyone really has.
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