Tips for managing emotional eating
Want to reduce your weight but love your food? Here are some tips to help you …
Identify the foods that you LOVE. Make a list of them. Why do you love them? What sort of emotional connection do you have with these foods? Acknowledge this love and don’t feel guilty about the foods you love – embrace them!
Don’t DEPRIVE yourself of the foods you LOVE. “Restricting or depriving ourselves of certain foods is the beginning of a sabotage process that will ultimately bring our dieting undone.”
GOLDEN RULE: There are no foods that are FORBIDDEN, only foods that we need to manage better. We need to keep the foods we LOVE in our diet but in smaller amounts, smaller portion sizes. We do this by first “allowing” them and second by savouring them.
Don’t STARVE yourself during the day. Eat a good sized breakfast and lunch to reduce the afternoon munchies when most over eating occurs.
ALLOW yourself to eat snack sized portions of one of your FAVOURITE FOODS every morning tea when you are less likely to over eat and you can burn them off during the day.
When you do eat your favourite food ENJOY IT- GUILT FREE. Take time to eat your food paying maximal attention, with all our SENSES to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch to fully experience the moment we are in while eating. This way you SAVOUR your food being mindful of the pleasure of your food and are lifted by it.
You can use this skill to be mindful of other pleasant aspects of your life e.g. sunset, good music.
Use the 3 steps of savouring
1) Anticipation. You can feel good looking forward to your food.
2) Use an attitude of gratitude to mindfully eat your food to enjoy and be thankful for the pleasures you are experiencing.
3) Once the eating experience is over reminisce and relive the memories of the experience
Eat like the FRENCH do, with:
- Fresh raw ingredients & home cooked meals
- Lunch as the main meal of the day (especially on weekends & holidays)
The LONGER we spend at a meal eating SLOWLY, the easier it is to eat less. It takes the brain 20 minutes to receive messages from the stomach that it’s full. …and you allow your brain time to register when it has eaten enough. You can eat slowly, enjoy it AND you can have some more tomorrow!
Don’t rely on SELF DISCIPLINE to change your eating behaviour. Look for ways to set up STRATEGIC STRUCTURES in your environment to help minimise temptations and change your habits. Examples might be having only small portions of your favourite food available, not going to buffet restaurants if you find it hard to stop eating, having healthy snacks available to reduce impulse eating.
“The answer lays not so much in changing our inner world as in rearranging out outer world.” Make the effort to organise your day to day life to make new habits work.
- MONITOR truthfully what food you eat and why you eat it.
- Think about how badly you want to lose weight. Is there PAIN associated with not changing your eating habits? What is the real pleasure and satisfaction in losing weight?
- Keep an Eating Awareness Diary to record the emotions they feel as they eat and begin o eat different foods.
- SLOW down your eating speed – it will be the easiest change to reduce your weight.
Use mindfulness principles
- How hungry am I? before the meal. Eating when you are overly hungry risks over eating. You your rating of hunger to inform your portion size.
- Check in with how hungry you are during the meal
If you eat because you feel stressed and your new personal eating plan is not enough, think about other things you can do to manage your emotions? Eg talk to someone, relaxation, keep busy, exercise etc.
There are no quick fixes, if there were would you trust them?
Referenced from: weight loss for food lovers By George Blair West, excellent reading
