Emotional eating is considered to be one of the biggest problems while trying to appease your feelings. Boredom, loneliness, frustration is often accompanied with bars of chocolate, pieces of cake, packages of chips and a bunch of other kinds of food. Learning how to control your wish to overeat becomes an art.
Even though everyone knows that food will not solve your problems, probabaly at least a short-term satisfaction becomes attractive. Food becomes a temporary help to soften stress, sadness, fatigue and other negative feelings. Here are some tips that you might find helpfull in getting rid of this bad habit.
1. Find a source of your negative feelings. Finding out what makes you sad or unhappy is essential in order to control your emotions. Talk to yourself and decide what changes you can make in your life to feel happier. Eliminate everything that causes negative emotions. Remember that you are the one that has to build your own life.
2. Commit to yourself. Emotional eating is just one more bad habit, such as smoking. Once you make a commitment to stop it, you must know that it is included in a list of forbidden actions.
3. Eat healthy food. Fresh fruits and vegatables and other high fiber foods, high protein foods like poultry and fish will make you feel more fresh and you will reduce your wish to contaminate your body with junk food.
4. Exercise. Sports is not only meant to help you control your weight. It’s a great mean on reducing stress and enhancing your good mood.
5. Sleep. If you sleep less than 6 hours, it is clear that you will have no energy to start a new day. This will most probably lead to looking for energy in food. Remember that when you are tired you will not be able to control the sense of satiety and eat more than you actually want.
6. Socialize. Don’t houmebound yourself. Get some support from your family and friends, go out, watch a good movie with someone you care about, walk your dog. Just make yourself busy.
Getting rid of emotional eating is a long journey where you will constantly be challenged. However, you should make every journey teach you something new and most importantly enjoy it.