Emotional Eating – How Snow White Can Help You Out

So how emotional are you over food? Some people regard food just as a source of fuel. They skip meals because they literally forget to eat and it will only be that gnawing hunger in their stomach that drives them to food. Lucky them, you might think. Actually, that’s not that case. People who are VERY food unaware can easily make poor food choices because they are just not paying attention to what they eat. They won’t overeat, but nor will they choose good quality nosh. They wait till they are hungry and could almost choose food randomly.

I’m assuming, if you’re reading this article, that overeating might be something you do. It could be for the sheer love of food (let’s not knock it; eating is one of the great pleasures in life). And we all do that occasionally – we need our family celebrations and feast days. But if you find that you eat so much that it affects your weight and your health, then emotional eating is the problem.

People who overeat because they’ve simply got into bad habits can usually correct that fairly quickly and once they start paying attention to their food they will shed the pounds quite easily. They have got into the habit of eating poor foods, but given new dietary suggestions they can change their eating habits quite easily. For them, their bad habits are simply a result of inattention and once they focus on their food they can easily eat well.

But perhaps for you, food is more than just a source of fuel and nutrients. Do you find yourself choosing a food because you “deserve a treat”? And do you need that treat every day? If you find this happening to you and if you have difficulty dieting or maintaining your weight at the end of a diet, you are an emotional eater.

You, too, wait till you are hungry before your eat. Trouble is, this is not true physical hunger. You may well feel hungry because you are getting physical signals from your body and your brain interprets these signals as hunger. But your need to eat may have little to do with calories or nutrition. So, obviously, after eating when you get that “full” signal from your tummy you may ignore it. Perhaps you have ignored it for so long that you no longer get the “full” signal. And then you can just keep on eating because your emotional hunger can go on forever.

And what does this have to do with Snow White?

Well, do you eat when you are Happy, Grumpy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey or needing a Doc(tor)?

It is so easy to use food to feed the emotions when what you might need is a hug, a chat with a friend, a walk in the sunshine, a refreshing cup of tea (the British cure for a crisis), or some type of physical activity! Or perhaps you need a rest, some sleep or a good laugh.

So... when you feel like overeating, what are you really feeling? And how else can you deal with that emotion?

Take action...and decide what you can do instead of eating. You can feed your emotions with so much more than food. And when you do eat, you can really enjoy your food and not feel guilty!

(c) 2008 Liz Copeland

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