Putting off pounds with Poetry

I get so emotional baby!  Emotions make you cry sometimes.  Tonight I wanna cry.  Emotions taken me over.  I tried to think of lyrics from different songs from different genres of music to express this blog.

Not only does emotions make you want to cry…emotions can also make you want to eat.  I find that I eat when I’m angry its something about the sound of crunching that calms me.   I don’t know…but what I do know is that majority of us on buddyslim are emotional eaters.   Its easy for me to say toughen up or get over it because old habits can be hard to break.  That’s just what it is, a habit that we have picked up over the years.  So below are some tips to help us kick the emotional eating habit.

How to Stop Emotional Eating

Overcoming the Craving to Snack Mindlessly

© Laurie Pawlik-Kienlen

If you eat when you’re sad, or you have an emotional eating disorder, then diets and exercise won’t help. These tips will help stop emotional eating or mindless snacking!

 

If you want to stop emotional eating, you need to be honest with yourself about why you’re snacking mindlessly. To overcome cravings, you must identify what you’re really feeling - and cope with your feelings differently. All the weight loss tips in the world won’t help you stop eating emotionally unless you know why you’re compelled to snack mindlessly.

 

Learning the Difference Between Physical and Emotional Hunger

• Emotional hunger can develop suddenly, or it can be an accumulation of your day: snubbed by a colleague, betrayed by a friend, leaving your reluctant child at daycare, losing a business contract. At the end of the day all you want to do is mindlessly eat a bag of chips, tub of ice cream or crates of take-out Chinese food – and stare at the tv.
• Emotional eaters don’t listen to their bodies. To stop emotional eating, you must tune in to the cues.
• Emotional hunger isn’t related to time. That is, you can feel emotionally hungry in the middle of the night, at three in the afternoon, or during the Late Show. Emotional eaters may mindlessly eat more at non-mealtimes than at mealtimes.
• Emotional hunger – and emotional eating – often leads to feelings of guilt and shame. You could stop emotional eating if you deal with those feelings.
• Emotional eaters don’t feel content or pleasantly satisfied after they eat. They feel sick.
• Emotional eaters still feel empty after they’ve eaten. To stop emotional eating, you must learn to satisfy your emotional hunger other ways.

Overcoming Cravings: Do You Want Ice Cream or Someone to Talk To?

When you’re struggling with a craving or feel driven to eat mindlessly, stop for a moment. How are you feeling? Sad, overwhelmed, angry, hurt, rejected, hopeless, scared? To stop emotional eating, find ways to express your feelings instead of eating. Call a friend, go for a walk, write, talk to a therapist, do Yoga, weed the garden, or clean the bathroom. Turn away from mindlessly eating food to feeling your true feelings.

 

Tips to Stop Emotional Eating:

1. Learn the difference between physical and emotional hunger, which is the difference between eating to fill a physical need and eating emotionally.
2. Eat slowly and listen to your body for clues that you’re physically satisfied.
3. Don’t eat mindlessly in front of the tv.
4. Don’t deprive yourself of foods you love – just don’t overdo it.
5. Don’t eat in bed or on the sofa. Eat at the kitchen table. Stop emotional eating by eating in the same place all the time.
6. Treat your body with respect: nourish it, move it around, listen to it, and pamper it. Tune in to your body to stop emotional eating.
7. Look for connections between the events in your day and your cravings for food. Identify the triggers that push you over the line and make you want to eat mindlessly (eg, fights with your partner or child).
8. Deal with your triggers. If you can’t cut them from your life entirely, find better ways to cope with your feelings. Eating mindlessly makes things worse.

Though these tips to stop emotional eating may seem difficult at first, they will become habit after a few weeks! With practice and time, you can overcome your cravings.

below is another article on emotional eating from www.athealth.com

 

Are You an Emotional Eater? Tips to Cope With the Cravings

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In our society food is a part of almost every activity: watching TV, sports events, weddings, funerals, parties, holidays, business meetings, play dates, basically any social get together has become an excuse to wheel out the food.

Emotional eating happens any time you eat not because you are physically hungry but because you have feelings of boredom, depression, loneliness, fear, anger or frustration. Eating takes your mind off the feelings. Eating comforts you. Eating in response to emotions and not hunger can result in overeating, unwanted weight gain, health problems and even greater stress. Be aware of what triggers your eating, and if you reach for food when stressed, consider the following:

• Keep a food diary. In your diary record data under these column headings: time, place, food eaten, amount, and your feelings. Identifying any stress, negative thoughts or emotions you’re having at the time will help you determine why you are eating.

 

• Identify patterns of emotional eating. Many people find that overeating tends to occur at specific times and in specific places. For instance, you may overeat in front of the TV in the evening after a stressful day.

 

• Plan alternatives and change routines. Instead of sitting down in front of the TV with a bag of chips after a stressful day you could take a walk, take a long bath, call a friend, write in a journal, or read a book. Do something that removes you from the situation that results in overeating.

 

• Remove tempting foods. Don’t buy the foods you crave when stressed! Having them in your house or desk is a disaster waiting to happen. If you really want to watch a favorite TV show in the evening, have nutritious low-calorie foods on hand. Better yet, find something to occupy your hands while you watch: give yourself a manicure, iron clothes or exercise.

 

• Know when and how to give in. It’s all right to occasionally give in to cravings. When you really do want to eat chips, buy a single serving instead of a whole bag, or take a small portion out of the bag, put in a small cup, and put the bag away before you eat.

 

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• When you eat, focus on the task at hand. Do not watch TV or read. Sit down at the table and leave when you are finished. Consciously eat slowly to give your stomach time to tell your brain when it’s full. If you’re still hungry after finishing your meal, wait 20 minutes before having a second helping or dessert.

 

• Plan nutritious meals and snacks. If you wait until you are ravenous, you’re more likely to reach for the wrong foods and to overeat. You may also find yourself nibbling all the way through meal preparation.

 

• Reward yourself when you eat in a healthy way. Buy yourself a novel or a new journal, go see a movie or get a massage. Rewarding yourself will increase the likelihood that you will maintain your new healthy habits.

 

• Make “The Healthy Refrigerator,” otherwise known as “you can’t eat the wrong food if you don’t stock it. One of the easiest ways to ensure healthier eating is to periodically clean out the refrigerator and get rid of all the junk… the junk food, that is.

Making dietary changes, and especially those centered on emotional eating, is tough. Changing eating habits that have been ingrained for years takes time. Take it one meal and one day at a time. You will be successful in combating overweight, obesity, and stress when you combine both diet and exercise. Treat the whole you and you will feel better about yourself.

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Adapted from The Stress Owner’s Manual: Meaning, Balance & Health in Your Life (2nd Ed.), by Ed Boenisch, Ph.D., and C. Michele Haney, Ph.D. Available at online and local book­stores or directly from Impact Publishers, PO Box 6016, Atascadero, CA 93423-6016, by phone at 1-800-246-7228, or www.bibliotherapy.com.

 

 Let grab ahold of our destiny and kick the emotional eating habits.  Lets turn those words that I opened the blog with back to what they were intended to be.  Words of a song not words used to describe our actions.