Emotional eating starts as a child when food's used to distract or cheer you up.
Emotional eating is when a cookie, candy or treat does more than fill your stomach. It also distracts you from your feelings. When you use food to distract you from your feeling, that's messed up.This is a learned behavior that gets reinforced year after year. As adults the ice cream, cookies, and mindless devouring of potato chip evolves into a coping device we use to numb out the negative events of our lives. With emotional eating, what triggers it is not the physical symptom of hunger, like a growling stomach. What triggers a desire for food is an emotional response to a negative, sad or stressful situation in your life. You continue with this behavior because you never acknowledged the problem and learned how to deal with the negative or stressful feelings that are part of life, because you always pushed them away with food. Learning how to deal with feelings without food is a process, here’s some tips to help you on your way: 1. First recognize the connection between feelings and food and learn what situations trigger this behavior in you. 2. Have an alternative to food that you can go to when you get the urge and you're not hungry. My solution was to take a long walk or go on a run. This not only took my mind off food, it also drained my body of the stress that was pushing me to indulge. 3. Get on a meal program of 5 meals a day (3 main meals and 2 snacks in between.) This will keep you from getting physically hungry and keep your body fueled all day long. 4. Remember that emotional eating can be turned into a healthy habit. Just reach for something healthy instead of the cookies or pizza next time. But, no matter what the food choice, learning how to control it and using moderation is key. 5. Lastly, always take 10 minutes to think about what is triggering your desire to eat before you head to the kitchen. Did you have a fight with your boyfriend / girlfriend? An disagreement with your boss? An misunderstanding with a family member? Start making it a habit to deal with these situations. Talk it out, work it out, or toss it out. But, deal with it and put it to bed. You’ll not only eliminate most of life's BS from your day, you'll also eliminate a emotional eating trigger. Smiles…Gigi
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