What is emotional eating & 3 tools to help you!

When you're at your weakest point emotionally, the strongest cravings for food often happen. Food has become a temporary escape from stress, worry, difficult problems, deadlines, and frustrations in relationships. Sometimes, you're just looking to keep yourself occupied! Your emotions heighten and you turn, consciously or unconsciously, to food for comfort & relief.

Your weight-loss efforts will be sabotaged by emotional eating. Emotional eating leads to eating too much, especially too much of high-calorie, sweet, fatty foods. There is good news! You can learn & follow the steps to regain control of your habits and achieve your weight-loss goals!

For me, learning about emotional eating & how to regain control has taken a year. It was challenging to realize that my weight-loss journey had come to a stand still because I was giving in to emotional triggers. What do you do if you find yourself at a party & even though you appear to be enjoying the party & mingling with friends the majority of your focus is on the dessert table. You can be smiling happily at a friend, laughing at their wit, while thinking of the moist, warm, chewy texture of those chocolate chip cookies, or velvet chocolate cake! Can you tell I'm a chocolate girl? The strong emotions of the party, a feeling of celebration & joy can be enough to trigger your emotional eating.

What if you're at home, frustrations are high because the house is a war zone, dinner is boiling over, and your children are not behaving like in Leave it to Beaver! Sometimes, without ever consciously choosing to do so, I've found myself in the freezer, spoon in hand, drowning my woes in that carton of ice cream!

The first thing I recommend for you is to get your hands on "the End of Overeating" by David Kessler. Here is MY experience! This book will help you understand what is going on inside your brain, and for me that has been a priceless lesson!

My second recommendation is for you to realize that nine times out of ten getting caught in a "mind storm" is what leads to emotional eating. Dean Anderson, Behavioral Psychology Expert describes it as "getting caught in a "mind storm" of worst-case scenarios, projections, misinterpretations, and all the emotional overreactions that come with these thoughts. This "storm" turns a manageable challenge into something that makes you feel helpless, overwhelmed, ashamed or afraid—and sends you to the kitchen to find something to stuff those extreme feelings."
Anderson says staying grounded during moments of stress presents you with options.

Here's how to stay grounded & in the present.
BREATHE! Calm yourself down mentally & physically with a trick I learned from a counselor, Rita Cowen. Breathe in while you silently, slowly count to a certain number. Exhale slowly as you count to the same number. Do this several times until you have calmed down. Stress & anxiety reside in the frontal lobe of the brain. She explained that counting uses the left side of your brain which pulls the focus from that frontal lobe. When we are stressed our breathing automatically becomes very shallow which naturally increases our anxiety. Breathing will calm us down physically & help you return to the moment.

NOTICE! Notice the physical sensation you are experiencing. Oh, how this has helped me! Recognizing specifically what I'm feeling and realizing that food cannot solve my problem or take away the sensation I'm struggling with aborts my mission to the pantry. In fact, I'm quite turned away from food when I remember that if I indulge I'll have the additional problem of knowing that I've acted against my goals, and strengthened the habit of emotional eating. Not good!

PERSPECTIVE! Whenever you feel overwhelmed, break the daunting task down from the mountain to manageable molehills you can handle one at a time. Anderson suggests asking yourself, "Will any bad things happen if I postpone thinking about this until I have more time to figure things out?" I love this suggestion! When I am calm, collected, & out of the kitchen I can sit down & evaluate the task & conceive solutions. I love that feeling of accomplishment & victory! I'm solving my problems effectively instead of turning to food to temporarily escape.

These are just a few tools for your emotional eating tool belt. Most importantly, do not give up or give in to discouragement! Victory will be yours! Of course, you'll occasionally stumble. The important thing is to get back up!! Everyone falls, everyone fails sometimes. Victory comes from getting back up & learning from your falls!

Congratulations on stepping aboard the weight-loss train! It's definitely an adventure! And, it's definitely, 100% worth it! I'm here to help you every step of the way!
Here's to your health & happiness!