We don't always eat because we're hungry. Sometimes we turn to food for comfort, stress relief, or even as a reward.
Here are some ways to stop emotional eating:
- Mindful Eating – You are most likely to forget how to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger when you are emotional and stressed. Mindful eating forces you to be mentally present and listen to your hunger cues. You do this by sitting down and focusing only on your meal. Focus on the smell, the taste, the textures. Slow down and only focus on what you are eating in the moment.
- Use your non-dominant hand to eat – Using your non-dominant hand will force you to slow down and think about what you are putting in your mouth.
- Develop fun alternatives – Go for a walk, have a dance party, hit a punching bag, call a friend, breathe deeply – these are just some examples of things you can do when emotional eating starts to take over. Have a plan in place as an alternative for when you find yourself emotionally eating. That way you don’t have to stop and try to think of what to do.
- Do something with your hands. Sewing, woodcarving, painting, etc. Anything that you can do with your hands can help you from mindlessly snacking.
- Eat only when you're actually hungry – Be aware that moods come and go and the feeling of hunger could just be a chemical reaction in your body to all the stress you are feeling. Be aware of your feelings in the moment.
- Eat real, healthy, and nourishing foods whenever you experience physical hunger. Junk food has ingredients in it that is proven to have addicting properties. Eating them releases the feel good hormones in our brains leaving us to only crave more. Like any habit or addiction, the way to break it is to replace it with something good for us. Done right, in a short time your body can actually crave nutritious food.
We hope these tips help you to overcome the trap of emotional eating.
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