HealthHabits

How to beat Emotional Eating

Are you an Emotional Eater?

  • Do your feelings drive your appetite and your eating behavior?
  • Do you eat when you are not hungry?
  • Do you continue to eat when you are full?…stuffed?…about to explode?
  • Do you ever find yourself on the couch with your hand at the bottom of a LARGE bag of chips?
  • Do you eat like this while you are alone?
  • When you are bored
  • When you are stressed?
  • To take your mind off of your problem
  • Do you feel guilty about this behavior?

If you answered YES, then you, my friend, are an Emotional Eater. And you’re not alone.

      

Janet Jackson and Britney Spears are celebrity examples of Emotional Eaters

So What Do I Do?

If you think that your manner of eating may constitute a threat to your health, please contact your doctor.

And here is some solid reference info:

What Do I Do Right Now?!

One tool you should look into right away is Mindful Eating.

Here are some great books to get you started:  Dr.Susan Albers – Eating Mindfully, Amazon book list

In the past few years, the practice of mindful eating has grown out of the more generalized psychiatric practice of Mindfulness Meditation, made popular by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It finds it’s origin in Buddhist teachings. The Buddhist practice of Mindfulness can be defined as “awareness of one’s thoughts, actions or motivations”.

  • A similar practice is currently being espoused by Oprah’s protege, Mr. Eckhart Tolle.
  • I Can Make You Thin with Paul McKenna employed mindful eating in it’s weight loss plan.
  • In the 1920’s, Horace Fletcher was the diet guru of the day with his theory of Fletcherizing.

Mindful Eating – The Basics

Eat consciously. By this I mean:

  • Take a bite of food
  • Put down your implements/sandwich/glass/etc…
  • Chew your food
  • Taste your food
  • Enjoy your food
  • Repeat until you ‘think’ you are starting to feel full
  • Stop Eating
  • Eat again when you are hungry – not bored or nervous – listen for a ‘grumbly tummy’

That’s It.

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8 comments

  1. This is a very helpful (and entertaining) post on an important cause of overeating and unhealthy weight gain. I like your summary of how to eat mindfully.

  2. I would love to exchange links with you for our blogrolls. Please let me know if your interested. I have a lot of clients who have food issues. Thanks, marcie

  6. I am very grateful for this post. This is a tremendous issue for many people who try and consistently fail to lose weight. Another excellent tool for emotional eaters is journaling. it worked really well for me in my weight loss. When you know you should work out but won’t get off the couch, writing feelings down in a journal can help sort out why that happens. If you are craving unhealthy foods in excess and aren’t hungry, or have binged, a journal of precipitating thoughts and events can identify emotional triggers to avoid in future.

  7. Alright – perhaps the universe is trying to tell me something. While browsing through amazon several books on mindful eating popped up as recommendations for me. It’s the first time I had seen any of the titles… and then this post bringing up the same subject.

    Hmmmm

  8. I gave up voleyball when I went to collage 4 years ago and I put on 20 kg. Now that I think how I did it is because emotional eating to. I tend to wish everyting that looks good and smells nice. Have no idea how to resist my temptations.

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