Emotional eating is caused by stress, lonliness, frustration at home, work and society, boredom and being upset, divorce, job loss, bereavement as well as abuse during childhood, and as an adult.
Imagine the following situation:
You have worked a nine hour day, you are totally stressed, tired, you had an argument with a colleague, you didn’t meet the deadline and your boss told you off for it. Then you get stuck in traffic and your stomach screems food. You finally arrive at home and all you find in your fridge is healthy veggies, chicken and a healthy yoghurt. But you are craving a very unhealthy pizza and a bottle of wine. And you just want to sit back, relax and watch TV.
It is ok to eat the occasional take away and drink wine of any other alcohol with it. But if your emotions take over your daily eating habits it can cause a problem.
Buying take aways, tons of sweets and pastries can cut a deep hole into your money pocket in the long run.
Not only your health and your body image will start to change but also your self-confidence and self -esteem will suffer. You will be aware of your weight gain when you try on new clothes in a department store, when size 12 has become size 14 or larger. Your sex life also suffers because you are aware of the change in size of your body.
Here is an action plan that helps:
- For one week make a note of what you eat, when you eat it and how do your feel while eating it.
- When you feel your apetite for eating comfort food then try to distract yourself by calling a friend, reading a good book, meditation, having a hot bath, listen to your favourite music, going for walk or drinking a herbal tea.
- Try to avoid drinking too much coffee. Caffeine stimulates apetite and large amounts of coffee can cause stress. And stress activates emotional eating.
- Visualize yourself slim. Take a magazine and cut out a slim person and glue your passport photo over her head. Place the photo with the slimmer you on your fridge where you always can see yourself as a slimmer person.
- Reward yourself for cutting down on emotional eating and losing weight by going to the cinema, having a new haircut, a manicure or buy the book everyone is talking about.
