Sometimes, the desire for food has nothing to do with the rumblings in your stomach telling you that you are hungry. Often these strong cravings for food, specifically comforting and fattening foods, strike when our emotions plummet or spike. You may turn to eating consciously or unconsciously when you are trying to deal with stress or even just to keep yourself occupied. This emotional eating is capable of completely derailing your weight loss plans. Getting a hold on emotional eating is an important factor for achieving your weight loss goals.
Identify the emotional triggers: Try and identify the feelings that trigger emotional eating. Start off by doing your usual daily activities. Whenever you feel like eating, think about whether you are actually hungry or just craving for comfort food. You can identify whether you are actually hungry if you feel your stomach rumbling or that it is hollow. Otherwise, it is just your taste buds tingling for snacks. Note down these emotional triggers and deal with them. Chewing a sugarless gum can help calm your taste buds.
Find other ways to deal with your emotions: You will need to find a healthier substitute for emotional eating. For instance, instead of treating yourself to that calorie laden fudge sundae in celebration of getting that dream job, just dance the night away. You will have a lot of fun and also burn calories. If you eat because you are sad, find someone who you can talk to about it. Talk a jog through the park. Exercising is an effective stress buster and you will be burning calories too. Even screaming into the pillow is better than gorging on junk food. If your eating is triggered by anger, kick, punch, scream or try some meditation to calm yourself down.
Face your problems: Instead of stuffing down your emotions with food, face your problems. If you eat emotionally because of a difficult relationship, try to find ways to work on the relationship. You will be happier in the long run. If you are stuck in a job you don’t like, try finding ways to gain job satisfaction or get a new job. Facing your problems head on will help you cut out the unnecessary stress so that you no longer need food to cope with them.
Keep these things in mind next time you reach out for that tub of ice cream when you are low. It’s high time you did something about it.
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