Emotional Eating 101 - Is Emotional Eating Sabotaging Your Weight Loss?
Posted: Tuesday, July 15, 2008
by Kate O'Neal
http://www.stop-emotional-eating.net
Not getting results with your diet? Sick of the yo-yo dieting, weight-loss-weight-gain cycle?
If diets haven't worked for you, then food may not be the problem. You may be struggling with emotional eating.
It's been estimated that over 75% of overeating has emotional roots behind it. This article will help you determine if emotional overeating is sabotaging your weight loss.
What is emotional overeating?Emotional over eating comes in many forms. You could be eating because you're:
- angry
- depressed
- scared
- anxious
- bored
- tired
- hurt
- lonely
- discouraged.
Some people even eat to calm themselves down when they are overly happy or excited.
Basically if you're eating in response to a difficult situation, when you're not physically hungry, then you're probably eating emotionally.
Emotional eaters may feel hunger come on very quickly and they feel they need to eat immediately. (Whereas regular physical hunger comes on slowly and usually isn't as demanding).
They may go out of their way to get food like driving to the grocery store late at night or driving long distances just to get a specific food.
They usually choose sweet or salty comfort foods like chocolate, cookies, cakes, chips, pizza, cheeseburgers or other 'bad' foods. They usually eat a lot of food very fast (this kind of behavior is usually called a binge).
They may feel frenzied or hurried, anxious to get the food all down. Alternatively, emotional overeaters may simply graze on food constantly just to get through the day.
Emotional overeaters usually eat way past the normal feeling of fullness. They usually feel emotions like guilt and regret after eating and may hide their eating from others.
So what's the big deal? Doesn't everyone use food to cope sometimes?
We all do it. Even naturally thin eaters have days when they just need a cheeseburger or piece of chocolate for a pick-me-up.
Eating out of your emotions becomes a problem when it starts to take over your life. When it starts to cause weight problems. And when food becomes your 'drug of choice' to handle any kind of difficult emotion.
It's then that this behavior becomes a habit - and losing weight becomes virtually impossible.
It also hurts us emotionally and psychologically. We don't develop confidence that we can handle hard situations since we're always numbing ourselves with food instead of facing the problem.
So what can you do?The good news is that if you are an emotional eater, now you know why diets haven't worked in the past. You haven't failed - the diets were just addressing the wrong thing - the food.
The real issue is that you've developed the habit of using food to handle difficult emotions. Once you address this, then you'll quickly notice your food cravings diminishing and you'll start to lose weight.
Take some time and learn more about emotional eating, handling stress and eating from natural hunger cues. Then you'll develop the confidence to feel your emotions instead of eating them - and you'll lose weight permanently.
About The Author:
Kate O'Neill writes for Stop Emotional Eating - a site offering tips, resources and programs to help you stop emotional overeating and lose weight for good.
For more information visit http://www.Stop-Emotional-Eating.net
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Yes, yes, yes and yes. Yes my problems are getting the best of me and yes I eat when stressed which is about 98% of the time. Nothing wrong in what you say, and believe it or not I have lost 40lbs recently. I don't know if it is what I am eating [although I changed my diet] or the stress? Hey I got a new suit out of it. Anyway good job. I wouldn't tell anyone not to try what you say. To each their own.
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