Here are some tips from the article “Working Together to Nourish You, Mind, Body and Soul “ written by Dr. Mehmet Oz, also known as “America’s Doctor”.
1. Meditate by emptying your mind of what happened earlier today or what will happen tomorrow. We rarely worry about what is happening right now, so focus on being in the present as you relax your mind. A basic technique to achieve a quiet, meditative state is to count your breaths.
2. Although the perfume industry has done admirably well, smell is an underutilized tool for healing. Find scents, like lavender, that will relax you, or scents that energize, like grapefruit. Use aroma to optimize your performance.
3. Music is medicinal in many cultures. Find tunes that deeply impact you and use them to help focus your spirit.
4. Speaking of spirit, we owe it to ourselves to write a one-sentence game plan for what we hope to accomplish as we evolve as humans. Please make this specific so you can judge how well you focus on your personal mission statement.
Read the full article on the Discovery Health website.
Adonis Corner, which bills itself as India’s Largest Online Men’s Magazine, has an article entitled How To Overcome Impulse Eating. From the post:
Men who tend to give in to impulse eating need to stop looking upon food as a way to cope with a bad day at work or because you couldn’t stick to their disciplined dieting regime. They need to learn how to eat less, eat sensibly and not look upon food as a friend.
and
As expert nutritionist, Jennifer Nelson and her colleague at the Mayo Clinic, USA, Katherine Zeratsky state, “get to the root of impulsive emotional eating” so you can beat the inclination to snack at odd times and spoil a healthy, balanced diet.
One way to combat impulse eating is to stay busy, exercise regularly and keep healthy, non-fatty and high (lean) protein snacks handy and dumping all your hidden stashes of junk food so there won’t be any temptations to your breaking a diet. Another way is to keep a check on food cravings by consuming health drinks like soymilk shakes or fresh fruit juices (non-sweetened) right after exercising or at times when you feel low.
The rest of the article can be read here.
Oprah.com has an article entitled "Oprah’s Weight Loss Confession", in which the immensely popular TV star details her struggle with her weight over the years, including her issues with emotional eating. Some selected passages from the 15 page article:
When Oprah turned 50 in 2004, she seemed to have her health and weight under control. For years, she maintained her figure with diet and exercise. She says she thought she had it all figured out, but in 2007, as Oprah dealt with emotional and medical issues, the number on the scale began to creep closer to 200…….
In February 2007, Oprah says she put on the first few pounds. Then, as life took over and she began to feel overwhelmed, she turned to food for comfort. "I have known since my early years of working with Bob Greene that for me it is not a cosmetic issue. It is an emotional issue," she says. "When my engine runs down, my drug of choice is food. My drug of choice used to be potato chips. Now, this year, it was organic multigrain blue chips…but a bag of them. So you eat a bag of those a day, and see what happens if you’re not working out."
When Oprah gains weight, she says it means her life is out of balance. "It’s not about the food. It’s about using food—abusing food," she says. "Too much work. Not enough play. Not enough time to come down. Not enough time to really relax."
Over time, she discovered what she was really hungry for. "I am hungry for balance," she says. "I’m hungry to do something other than work."
When times are tough, Oprah remembers a lesson she learned from author Marianne Williamson. "She was saying that your overweight self does not stand before you craving food. It’s craving love," Oprah says. "It’s about extending yourself in so many different directions that you literally become unconscious. You’re just trying to get through it all and not giving back to yourself. When you love yourself enough, you take care of yourself."
Oprah wants everyone who’s struggling with weight to make themselves a priority this year. "Look at falling off the wagon as I am—not as a weight issue, but a love issue," she says. "Like all of you, I’m really good at giving love to other people and my happiness … really comes from giving to other people. But we all need to make 2009 the year we give ourselves as much love and support as we give to others.
At the end of the article, the oprah.com staff asks five questions to help people get back on track:
- What are you hungry for?
"The weight is always representative of something other than what it looks like," Oprah says. "You don’t have a weight problem; you have a self-care, self-love problem." - Why are you overweight?
"It’s not because you like a certain food," Bob says. "Get deep into it." - Why have you been unable to maintain weight loss in the past?
"This one is really more about ‘Why have you failed?’" Bob says. - What in your life is not working?
"You’re going to find the answers in those areas that you say are really important to you," Bob says. "But they’re not doing well." - Why do you want to lose weight?
"If any part of your answer hints that you’ll be happy at a certain size or weight, you’re setting yourself for failure because [there are] two outcomes," Bob says. "You never reach that size or weight and you’re never happy. And even worse, you reach that size and weight and realize it has nothing to do with your happiness."
The Mayo Clinic has an excellent post entitled “Weight-loss help: How to stop emotional eating: Find out how emotional eating can sabotage your weight-loss efforts and learn how you can regain control of your eating habits.” The post describes the problems associated with emotional overeating and offers several practical tips on how to stop emotional overeating such as:
- Learn to recognize true hunger.
- Know your triggers.
- Look elsewhere for comfort.
- Don’t keep unhealthy foods around.
- Snack healthy.
- Eat a balanced diet.
- Exercise regularly and get adequate rest.
Inny, at I’m No Quitter, has a great blog chronicling “my weight loss struggles and accomplishments, my work towards having a healthier life and the occasional musings about life and it’s meanings.” Her post entitled “On carbs, serotonin and why we binge” is a great first person account of emotional eating and binging. From her post:
What got me interested in reading about depression and serotonin is the struggle I’ve had with my weight for as long as I can remember. I didn’t become overweight because I wasn’t eating healthy. Most of the time I was. Even now I have no problem limiting the food I eat, I love eating vegetables and cooking healthy recipes. What made me gain weight was that at least once every week I would have a huge craving for something sweet or starchy and the urge to overeat on those foods was so big that I gave in and consumed thousands of calories in the form of chocolate bars. Now that I have to lose weight I still deal with those cravings and it’s as hard as always to resist them.
When guilt settles in after binging, I blame myself, I blame lack of self control, I blame laziness in keeping a food diary, I blame my mom or roommate or friend who bought the chocolate in the first place. I try to battle with this in the way everyone else does. I keep a food diary, limit my daily food intake, try not keep any sweet or starchy food at home. What haven’t actually occurred to me is: How great will life be if I didn’t have food cravings in the first place. Or if I had them so rarely they were not a problem.
The rest of the post is available here.
On the healthcare.com blog network, Dr. Hal has an article entitled “The Mental Fitness Solution For Emotional Overeating.” The post discusses the idea that to stop emotional overeating, we need to simply change the emotions that trigger overeating. From the post:
If you want to change your feelings and reduce emotional overeating, then change your thoughts. Consciously think in a way to create feelings that will result in emotional satisfaction. Then think the new thought repetitively. Repetitive thinking of the new thought not only will change our feelings, but also will program our brain.
The goal is to repetitively think in a way that provide emotional satisfaction of our wants and needs rather than deprivation.
Emotional overeating is the product of deprivation thinking. We are think and feel deprived of love, happiness or something in our lives, so we indulge in eating and gain weight.
Emotional overeating is often the product of rewards thinking. We think and feel successful, so we reward ourselves by overeating or eating whatever we deserve. Over-eating to reward ourselves is a delusional reward. In reality, gaining weight is not a reward; it is a punishment and burden.
The bottom line is to think to change our feelings. The goal is to repetitively change your thinking in order to change your feelings and achieve your desirable weight.
1. CHOOSE THE HEALTHIEST FOODS YOU CAN FIND TO TRULY NOURISH YOUR BODY – You need protein, vegetables, complex carbohydrates (whole grains, veggies) and some healthy fat every single day. You will feel more balanced emotionally when you are caring for your physical needs.
2. DRINK LOTS OF PURE, NON CHLORINATED FILTERED WATER – Buy bottled water or filter your own. Becoming dehydrated affects all your body systems and your emotional self is happier the healthier you are!
3. MOVE YOUR BODY CHOOSE ACTIVITIES THAT YOU ENJOY – You don’t have to exercise for hours at a time. Do less and enjoy feeling yourself as you become stronger, more relaxed and more emotionally balanced.
4. EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS – No one knows what’s going on inside of you if you don’t tell them. Holding your feelings in leads to emotional, spiritual and physical distress… and is likely to lead you to the cookie jar.
5. MAKE AS MANY SELF-LOVING CHOICES AS YOU CAN – Do this every day and in every area of your life! You will be happier and more content and less likely to develop those emotional food cravings.
6. GIVE YOURSELF QUIET TIME – We all need rest and peaceful time to check in with ourselves. Use deep breathing, meditation or some form of quiet introspection every day.
7. SPEND TIME IN NATURE – We are all a part of the world around us, not separate from it. Relax outdoors, feel the sun and the rain, the warm and the cool. Notice the stars and breathe.
8. NURTURE YOUR SPIRIT – Be creative, laugh, play, hug someone. Stop taking life so seriously. We are all still children – only in bigger bodies. Be child-like.
9. APPRECIATE YOURSELF – This is your job. Others are too busy to make your happiness and well being their mission. If you have expectations that others will meet your needs (and they might sometimes…) you will likely be disappointed more often than not.
10. ALWAYS REMEMBER THERE ARE NO MISTAKES ONLY LESSONS – and whatever you do, NEVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BEAT YOURSELF UP. This will only make things worse. We are all perfect, yet it is not the human way to behave perfectly at all times. If you beat yourself up, you will feel BAD and sugars and simple carbohydrates will scream out for your attention.
Emotional Overeating, in a general sense, occurs when people make food choices based on emotional reactions. Emotional eating happens when we use food as a solution to our feelings. Think of any emotional state, and you’ll soon be able to associate a food with it. You’re bored? Why not polish off the ice cream in the fridge? Stressed? Might as well have a few chips to take your mind off your problems. As soon as you give in to a food craving, it’s easy to take your mind off of the cause of your emotional state.
The problem with using food to manage mood is that it becomes a self-reinforcing habit. You eat because you feel bad about yourself, then feel bad about yourself because you overeat.
To gain a better understanding of what emotional overeating is, and who emotional eaters are, we spoke with Dr. Denise Lamothe, clinical psychologist and doctor of holistic health. She is the founder of Emotional Overeating Awareness Month, author of the popular book, The Taming of the Chew (Penguin 2002) and an international professional speaker:
An emotional eater is (generally) someone who uses food as a way to cope with difficult feelings — sadness, anxiety, boredom, disappointment, etc. She is likely to have rigid, self-perfectionistic expectations and a negative self-image. Her self-esteem fluctuates but when she overeats, she feel badly about herself and her behavior and she is likely to punish herself and feel angry at herself often leading to depression. After overeating and beating herself up she will usually feel helpless to change. These painful feelings can easily lead her to overeat again in order to feel better. She usually feels unable to control her eating once she gets started. She may temporarily feel better by convincing herself that she will start taking care of herself next Monday, after she finishes a project, once she learns how to “fix” her relationship or something like that. Her plan usually fails of course, leading to more discouragement, frustration and anger which then can lead her back to sugars and/or simple carbohydrates for relief — indeed a vicious cycle. This is generally a pattern that she has repeated multiple times throughout her life and she may or may not be aware of it.
This blog is dedicated to helping people overcome the perpetual cycle of emotional overeating.
Welcome to EmotionalEatingHelp.org, a site devoted to helping people understand, treat, and overcome emotional overeating. This blog will be a resource for people looking to find out more about emotional eating and will offer tips and news on:
- Techniques to avoid emotional overeating
- Interviews with experts
- Advice on how to overcome emotional overeating
- Healthy alternatives to bad food
- Coping with emotional overeating
- The psychology of overeating
- Products to help emotional overeaters
- Weight loss strategies
- Mental fitness information
This blog is sponsored by Bach Original Flower Remedies, makers of the Emotional Eating Support Kit. More information on Bach’s Emotional Eating Support products is available here.
