3 Steps to Prevent Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a crutch that many overweight and obese individual use to hide their true emotions.

Using food to deal with emotions becomes a habit. Habits are formed from consistently doing the same thing over and over again.

It usually begins when we are small children. Can you think of a time when your were a child that your mother consoled you with food?

I can, I remember feeling sad because the neighbor kids wouldn’t play with me. To console me, my mom made me homemade chocolate pudding. Mmmmm. Anytime I was feeling sad or blue, I could count on Mom to make me my favorite foods. This was the beginning of my bout with emotional eating.

And to tell you the truth, I know I’ve done it with my own children too.

For some reason we are trained to deal with our emotions with food. If you do this every now and then, it probably won’t have any impact on your weight or health.

However, the downside is that many people begin using food as a coping mechanism – and this is when emotional eating becomes a BIG problem.

As a child, you eat because the kids teased you at school, or didn’t pick you to be on their team.

As a teen, you’re devastated because you don’t have a date for the school dance, you didn’t make the team, you broke up with your boy/girl friend. And teenage girls often bicker with their best friends … and well you know that parents really don’t know anything when you’re a teen. With the disappointments and lectures from your clueless parents you eat and eat and eat.

Along comes adult hood and all the responsibilities it includes. You hate your job, stressed out over deadlines, you don’t have enough money to pay your rent, unplanned pregnancies, raising a family, taking care of aging parents and the list goes on … And what do you do? You eat.

STOP and Ask yourself …

Has emotional eating ever solved any one of your problems?

Has it ever truly made you feel better?

Emotional eating only gives us temporary relief. Being full and satisfied gives our body physical comfort. In return this distracts us from our problems for a little while.

It doesn’t solve your problems, and you’ll soon be faced with the choice to deal with your emotions again.

3 Steps to stop emotional eating

1. Recognize True Hunger …

Before you eat take a second and ask yourself …

Is my hunger physical or emotional?

Why am I eating?

Am I really hungry?

How long has it been since I’ve ate? (If you just ate an hour or two ago, you’re more than likely want to feed your emotions.)

How would I rate my hunger on a scale of 1 to 5 with 1 being ravenous and 5 being stuffed?

2. Identify emotional eating triggers …

For the next several days, write down what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat, how you’re feeling when you eat and how hungry you are. This will help you to identify what feelings cause you to eat.

Some common triggers are boredom, stress, anger, loneliness and boredom.

You may also eat just because it’s there or because everyone else is eating … Remember we are talking about why people eat when they are not physiologically hungry.

Some people eat according to the clock for various reasons – including medical reasons. This is fine as long as you aren’t overdoing it and are choosing healthy foods. To lose weight you may have to count calories.

3. Develop alternative to emotional eating …

Now that you know what triggers are you can develop a plan to change your eating behaviors?

Sit down with pen and paper and brainstorm alternative behaviors to eating. Write down everything you think of. You might be quite surprised by some of your ideas.

Write your solutions on 3X5 cards and place them where you will see them in your moment of need

Taking a walk, deep breathing, meditation, drinking a tall glass of water, calling a friend are just a few of the thousands of alternatives.

Knowing why you eat is the first step towards changing your eating patterns.

Know that there will be times that you will give into emotional eating. Expect it, plan for it, and don’t worry about it when you do give in. Concentrate on the positive, each and every time that you find an alternative to emotional eating – you are one step closer to breaking the vicious cycle of emotional eating.

Don’t feed your feelings-deal with them.

Technorati Tags: Emotional Eating, Mindless Eating