I was asked to provide some emotional eating strategies and tips for a recent magazine interview so I decided to share these tips with you:
- Identify the need being filled by food and find other ways to meet that need
- Identify your triggers: the situations, moods and foods that are most likely to trigger overeating
- Have a coping strategy prepared in advance for
dealing with the trigger situations you identified above - Consider keeping a food and mood journal: if you bite it, sip it or slurp it, write it down together with a record of your mood before and after eating
- Make a list of reasons for quitting emotional eating. Focus on the benefits of better eating rather than on missing out on foods you like.
- A lot of people don’t enjoy working out but exercise does help. It improves energy and mood reducing reliance on food to boost mood and energy
- If you can’t be trusted with food buy small portions and never keep binge foods in the house, your desk or car. Remove food from visible surfaces and place it in cupboards or drawers so it is less tempting
- Identify gaps in your life or emotional issues that trigger emotional eating and make a plan to deal with them
- Chew each mouthful 20 times
- E.A.T. – when at home always Eat At the Table
- Buy or serve small portions when you are eating at the movies, in front of the television, computer or other places where you are likely to subconsciously overeat.
- Rest your knife and fork/fingers between mouthfuls; reassess your hunger every few minutes.
- Distract yourself from food. When you feel a craving do something else for five minutes and your craving may disappear.
- Eat consciously and mindfully
- Consider taking a stress management course or learn meditation, yoga or tai chi to improve your coping skills and inner calm
- Consider visiting your doctor to identify physiological issues that may be impacting on your eating, such as, depression, anxiety, Syndrome X, diabetes, hypothyroidism, vitamin B12 or iron deficiencies
4 comments:
Great ideas here. I especially appreciate the part about addressing the triggers that cause unnecessary eating.
I've come to the conclusion that weight control and mental health can be inseparably linked in some people. Weight loss alone won't cure mental health, of course, just like addressing mental health issues won't automatically cause you to lose weight. However, proceeding with one makes the other one that much easier to deal with.
Thanks for your feedback Rick. Good luck with your weight loss
A great post! And I'm proof of the effectiveness of exercise. It's most certainly a mood lifter, and I'm a lot less likely to succomb to emotional eating when I exercise regularly.
As always, thanks for an excellent post and for your excellent blog!
Oh, Talia -- I tagged you for a meme! Details are on my blog. :)
Post a Comment
Hi and thanks for stopping by. We know word verification and comment moderation is a nuisance but it helps us weed out the spam bots.
Please be patient and we will authorise your comment as quickly as we can.
Talia & Nancy.