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In This Edition: Emotional Eating Awareness is the first step of change Facebook Live
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It happens to every one of us, myself included. We all do some emotional eating. And, of course, what drives our eating are the thoughts and feelings we have, rather than our hunger.
Emotional eating is a huge subject, so I will break it down into 3 parts, continuing for the next 2 weekly
newsletters.
How do you know if you're overeating for emotional reasons?
1. Your hunger comes on quickly and feels urgent.
2. You eat more than you normally would and you feel uncomfortably full. 3. You eat very quickly, stuffing food in as if you are trying to stuff yourself. 4. You are left feeling
guilty and cross with yourself. 5. You feel the desperate need to eat something right away. 6. You experience an urge to eat when you are emotionally upset, happy, bored, stressed or anxious. 7. You eat to get rid of a feeling of emptiness. 8. You've tried to lose weight before and never succeed due to your urge to eat. 9. When you get hungry you feel you need a certain type of food to treat or satisfy yourself. 10. You often eat
mindlessly, not paying attention to the taste or how much you are eating. 11. You feel powerless over your desire to eat unhealthy food, or over portion control.
If you answered "Yes" to more than 3 of these questions, you are being triggered by emotional eating.
Recently, one of my clients realized she used food to help with stress, when she feels lonely and to celebrate. I posted in our "Women Losing
Weight" face book group Asking what kinds of feelings come up when the women felt the need to snack. Some of the answers were: - Frustrated
- Bored
- Angry
- Disappointed
others might
be: - Tired
- Sad
- Anxious
- Overwhelmed
- Depressed
What about you, what are your triggers?
Do you know?
It's important to keep track, to get clarity, to begin to change.
For the next week. Simply pay attention and keep a log. Like a food journal, but instead, writing down what was
happening before you ate and how you felt.
- You might note the time of day
- Where you were
- The situation - in a meeting, at work, watching TV, etc
- What you were feeling
- How you felt after
- Any other insights
Over time you'll probably begin to see a pattern, you may discover that certain situations drive your emotional hunger. Perhaps you're very stressed at work, or you're depressed, or you're unhappy in your
relationship and you're using food as an outlet.
You may come up with some overwhelming feelings, if things surface that you've been avoiding for a very long time.
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Awareness is the first step of change
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What patterns emerge?
Awareness is the first step of change and awareness can sometimes trigger those big Ah Ha moments that are catalysts for enormous change.
At the beginning of one of my weight loss groups we were going around the table and some of the participants were sharing why they had gained weight. One woman was talking about how stressed
she was because her husband's job was very unstable and they had 2 young kids.
All of a sudden it hit her, and she started to cry, "Oh my God, I never realized just how stressed I was!" With this realization and release, she went on to lose 15 pounds in the 13 week group.
So this week, even if you're sure you know what feelings are triggering your eating, keep a journal. We'll go over the next steps next week, in part
2.
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Hiking in Val David, North of Montreal
Some of the people in my cross country ski club, getting out for a fall hike.
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I've jumped out of my comfort zone and I am sharing health and weight loss tips in some videos on Facebook live! Join me tomorrow (or today) depending on when you're reading this. Thursday, Nov. 17th,12:30 EST, I'll be doing another short live video on my fb page !
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To your natural health! Sue-Anne If you like this e-zine, feel free to forward it to a friend. If a friend did forward this to you and if you like what you read, please subscribe by visiting here. | |
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