Emotional eaters use food to deal with feelings.
Emotional eating creates a roller-coaster way of life. It can become an obsession. Emotional eaters use food to deal with feelings. Food serves as a tension reliever when experiencing boredom, anxiety, loneliness, stress, anger, and other strong feelings. Use of food as a source of mood management becomes a habit, but the soothing effect lasts only a short period of time. Quality of life is greatly affected when emotional eating is used as a coping strategy for life's challenges.
Instructions
1. Determine if you are an emotional eater. Ask yourself if food is used to calm your emotions or to address moods such as boredom, anger, stress, anxiety, anger, and loneliness. According to Jane Jakubczak, RD, LD, student health center dietitian at the University of Maryland, emotional eating only serves as a distraction for the real issues being faced. Estimates are that emotional eating accounts for 75 percent of all food consumed
2. Question yourself on your hunger level whenever you reach for food. Start developing awareness of the ways you use food to sedate emotions.
3. Stop focusing on diets and scales that only add another way to feel bad or emotional. Simply dieting and weighing yourself every day or week does not address the true cause of your emotional eating.
4. Consider what your emotional eating is or is not accomplishing. Question whether putting on extra weight is a scapegoat for having to deal with the issues you are facing. For example, focus and blame on excess weight might be easier to deal with than relationship, financial or career problems.
5. Develop strategies to cope with issues you are facing in ways that do not include food. Enroll in a class or work with a counselor or coach that focuses on overcoming emotional eating instead of burying your emotions. Get involved in a physical activity you enjoy. Find a new hobby. Take a walk and enjoy nature's beauty. Spend some quiet, peaceful time alone each day. Eat healthier foods that provide a full feeling for a longer period of time. Fruits and vegetables have high water content, fiber and roughage that provide a full feeling and takes time to break down in the body, thus keeping the blood sugar at a more even level. Whole grain foods supply a full feeling longer by keeping insulin levels and blood sugar stable. On the other hand, eating a candy bar will provide temporary satisfaction but the refined sugar enters the blood stream very quickly causing blood sugar levels to soar and plunge leaving a feeling of hunger in a short period of time. "You'll feel more balanced emotionally when you're caring for your physical needs", says Dr. Denise Lamothe, emotional eating expert and author of "Taming of the Chew."
6. Approach problems in a different way. Look for opportunities in the challenges. Choosing to look at issues in a different way creates a powerful tool for coping with stress. For lasting behavioral change to occur, according to Ellen Shuman, founder and Executive Director of the Well Centered Eating Disorder Treatment Programs, the focus must shift from dieting and weight loss to self-care and a desire for improved health.
