Solving your problems with a doughnut!

14^th July 2011

Emotions are like waves. Watch them come and go on the vast ocean of existence.

“It used to be that food was the only thing that made me happy and gave me pleasure, even if it was only for a moment or two.  Then afterwards I would feel awful about all the food I’d eaten, and guilty because yet again I’d eaten too much.  It became a vicious cycle”. 

This was said to me in a meeting not so long along, I’ve heard similar sentences many, many times members telling me (myself included might I add) how they use food to deal with the stresses of life.  Really most of the time if we’re not hungry, we shouldn’t be eating!  Eating for pleasure only now and again isn’t the end of the world but doing it all the time is not so good because then it affects our weight and our mood.

Unfortunately from the second we’re born, people link food with enjoyment, affection and nurturing.  That’s what comfort eating is all about: a really strong link between feelings and food.  How many of us respond to life’s stresses and problems by going straight to the fridge or the biscuit tin?  It’s just become a lifetime habit, the secret to success is to learn to understand your emotions and realising eating doesn’t improve a bad situation and finding non-food ways to deal with those situations. 

Even though plenty has been done, we don’t actually need research to tell us that if we become aware of our emotional eating and find other ways to deal with it, then our weight loss is going to be helped enormously. 

Life has problems, arguments take place, illness, disappointment all of those things that make you appreciate the good days more happen probably more regularly than you’d like sometimes.  But we all know that overindulging at those times actually ends up making us feel worth, you don’t have to let these situations sabotage your weight loss.  Become more aware, actually admit that you emotional eater (we all are to some degree) and then you can start to develop strategies to deal with your feelings whether they’re happy, sad or stressed without food jumping in and taking over.

Do you eat when your unhappy, angry or stressed?
Do you eat for comfort?
If you do overeat, do you end up feeling guilty afterwards, which then leads you to overeating even more?
Do you often give into your food cravings?
And do you find it easier to eat than talk about how your feeling?

The alternatives are so simple, but at the same time SO difficult, but with a little time and effort you can find alternative responses to the stresses and strains of real life.  If your bored – read a book, if your angry – speak to someone, tell the person your angry at, why you’re angry.  If you’re upset, have a good cry and if you’re happy – smile, laugh, sing, dance – but don’t eat ;D

The main thing is to actually acknowledge that you emotionally eat and then start to recognise when it’s taking place.

To do that you could start tracking your hunger signals.  Use your tracker to keep a record, over time you will probably start to notice a pattern and you will start to see more clearly when your emotions are making a difference to the way you eat.

Also notice which emotions tend to make you personally eat.  There are so many of them, Happiness, Boredom, Anger, and Stress.  Again using your tracker, write them down.

Start to think of your own alternative responses that you can use to replace the eating.  When I’m stressed if I have time I go for a walk, I’ve actually noticed since I go for a morning walk every day I don’t get as stressed anymore, so I’m preventing the stress.  There really is nothing quite like an early morning walk, this morning I watched the mist drop and move across the park, it was amazing and so tranquil and a little bit eerie.  Maybe try a yoga class to calm you or go the opposite end of the scales with a zumba class to work all that stress off.  If you’re bored, find something to do, eating shouldn’t be a hobby!

Whatever solutions you come up with, make them easy to do, otherwise you’ll be stuck as emotions hit fast and unexpected, and you need to be able to respond right away.  I can’t just drop everything the moment I get stressed and go for a walk, so I find deep breathing and counting to ten helps too!

I also find listening in my meeting helps, members come up with some great ideas, it’s the best place to share tips and find out how others deal with real life and weight loss together.

Well I’m off to get ready for my meeting this morning, I look forward to every one of them.  Last night Michael got his gold certificate after losing 48½lb, that’s almost three and a half stone.  I did have a couple of disappointed too but they’re not going to stop because they know they’re doing the right thing and the weight loss will follow, I was thrilled that one of my members lost 3lb last night after being dreadfully upset last week that she hadn’t lost.  It just shows that with a slight change in focus and maybe the odd tweak, success can be yours.

Have a tremendous Thursday. xx