Stop Emotional Eating
When you eat large quantities of food in response to your feelings and not hunger, you are an emotional eater. Almost 75 percent of overeating is emotional eating. Social conditioning, parenting or habitual repetitions teach us that food brings comfort. T
Article created: 23/02/2010
Stop Emotional Eating With Hypnosis Help
When you eat large quantities of food in response to your feelings and not hunger, you are an emotional eater. Almost 75 percent of overeating is emotional eating. Social conditioning, parenting or habitual repetitions teach us that food brings comfort. This makes food the first choice to deal with emotional problems. All feelings like chronic anger, boredom, frustration, relationships issues, depression, loneliness, anxiety, stress and low self esteem lead to the fridge. When you are able to understand the triggers of your emotional eating, you can look for an appropriate technique to manage the underlying emotional problem. Stop emotional eating with hypnosis help and take food and weight gain out of the equation.
Is emotional eating and comfort eating the same?
When you feel emotions, you comfort eat. However, comfort eating is more controlled as you are conscious of your action. If you are a comfort eater you choose and savor your treat like an ice cream tub or the bar of chocolate. You consciously and deliberately choose your substitute for the emotion and enjoy every mouthful often regretting it the next day when you get on the scale. As a comfort eater, you may even eat out of boredom so as to pass away the time in an enjoyable manner.
An emotional eater eats in extreme measures, eating large quantities of food very fast. If you are an emotional eater, you have no conscious choice of what you are eating, rarely ever savoring the food. The regret with overeating is also instantaneous, making it a vicious cycle of overeating and regretting. When eating in a positive good mood like a celebration, both emotional and comfort eaters are the same.
Identify your triggers for emotional eating
There are five major categories of situations and emotions that trigger emotional eating.
Social triggers – you may be indulging in emotional eating when around others. This could be due to being encouraged by others to eat or when you eat to try and fit in with your company, during arguments or when you have feelings of being inadequate around other people.
Emotional triggers – most of us eat to fill the void for loneliness or in response to feelings of stress, tension, anger, fatigue, depression and anxiety.
Situational triggers – you could be somebody who indulges in emotional eating when the opportunity arises. For instance, passing by a bakery or seeing an advertisement for a food item. This could also be an association like some people eat when watching television or going to the movies.
Triggered by thoughts – making excuses for eating or overeating due to negative self-worth, for instance, scolding yourself for low will power.
Physiological triggers – some of you may even be indulged in emotional eating as a response to a physical cue. For instance, your overeating could be because you skipped a meal or that you need to eat to cure that headache.
Keeping a food diary will help you identify your emotional eating trigger and recognize the pattern.
Causes of emotional eating
A majority of people have comforting memories from their childhood about food. I am sure you remember your boo-boo fixed with an ice-cream cone or your success being rewarded with a pizza. It is difficult to not develop an emotional attachment with food when you were growing up. In lack of developing any other strategy to cope with emotions, we tend to eat to feel better, eat to celebrate and even eat to deal with the feelings associated with being overweight!
There are countless reasons for emotional eating but there is one more commonly faced – uncomfortable emotions. Maybe you are somebody who rather eat than confront a problem. So, you deal with everyday frustrations in your married life with a box of cookies rather than communication. It is easy to not feel your emotions that scare you and take away the focus with food.
Whatever the cause of your emotional eating, it is not doing you any good. Weight gain, obesity, health issues related to these and various emotional problems related to your eating pattern arise undoubtedly. It would do you a world of good to find techniques for relaxation that allow you to cope in a healthy way. Try and face your emotions rather than downing them with a piece of cake. When your stress levels begin to diminish, you will not require food to cope with it. Get a healthy alternative and break your habit of emotional eating.
How can you break the habit of emotional eating?
Mostly by the time you can identify your emotional eating triggers, it has become a habit for you. It is important to develop an alternative to reaching out for food. You could go for a walk or learn some deep breathing exercises. Talking to a friend or concerned family member helps too as long as you do not discuss a cake recipe. You could actually indulge in any pleasurable activity that takes your mind off the urge to eat.
When distraction is not enough
If simply distracting yourself from eating is not helpful; you need to adopt effective ways to cope with emotional stress. Counseling could be an option where you can receive help to address the underlying emotional problem either alone or in a group. You can learn to quit binging and cope with your overwhelming urge to eat with healthier ways. It is our second nature to repeat behavioral patterns that have been reinforced for long. As you start noticing a change in your habitual patterns, do not forget to reward yourself so as to increase the likelihood of maintaining your new found habits.
Change your habitual patterns with hypnosis
With self hypnosis downloads that can be used in the privacy of your own home, you can begin the first step of unlearning your negative patterns and food associations for good. From a young age, we tend to associate food with discipline, love and comfort – break this distorted association with hypnosis. Since all your associations and habits are automatic, they are housed in the subconscious and come to us on auto pilot. Hypnosis is a tested method of reaching the subconscious to retrain it. Get back control on your eating habits while you learn to relax and deal alternatively with stress, shame, guilt and low self-esteem. You do not have to wait for all else to fail, stop emotional eating with hypnosis help and benefit from lasting results.