Are You A Stress Eater?
Emotional eating is a common issue that many of us struggle with or have at one point in our life - right now trying to adjust to our new normal, this can bring on crazy anxiety and stress and trigger us to turn to food for comfort.
While small doses of stress eating aren't necessarily physically dangerous, they can quickly develop into a habit. This habit can lead to weight gain or prevent you from losing weight. Comfort eating is particularly problematic when it is the primary way you calm and soothe yourself.
I have 3 ONE MINUTE FIXES (backed up by science) of how to eliminate emotional eating
How Can you Tell if you are Emotionally Eating?
There are 3 tell-tale signs of comfort eating.
You eat when you are not physically hungry.
Cravings are triggered by stress or an emotion such as anger, anxiety, or boredom
When you’re eating -it’s mindless. You may not enjoy or taste the food because you are eating it mechanically, as if in a trance. Imagine sitting in front of the TV mindlessly popping chips into your mouth.
Why is Food so Comforting?
There are 3 main reasons food can be so seductive in moments of stress.
Biology. When you are stressed out, your body is flooded with cortisol, a stress hormone, which makes you crave carbohydrates, sugar and fatty foods. Food soothes these chemical changes. Chocolate is an excellent example. Chocolate boosts the "feel good" neurotransmitters and chemicals in your body that make you more alert and excited.
Eating can be distracting. It can take your attention away from whatever is bothering you emotionally.
Emotional eating may be linked to your childhood. Perhaps home baked cookies or macaroni and cheese automatically trigger positive or comforting memories from the past.
How can we Stop Emotional Eating?
Thankfully, you can break the habit of emotional eating. It takes practice and finding creative, new ways to calm and successfully soothe yourself. The goal is to rewire your brain to identify non-eating behaviors as comforting.
Step One: Be Aware.
Much of emotional eating is so unconscious that it happens automatically or below your awareness. Before you jump into changing this behavior, keep a journal. Write down where and when you stress eat. The office? Late at night? When you are alone? Are there any patterns that you notice? Every time you eat, ask yourself how physically hungry you are on a scale from 1-10. If you are a 6-10, it's likely that you are physically hungry. A 3, for example, would signify that you are stress eating.
Step Two: Replace.
If you take out stress eating, you have to put something in its place. Write down a concrete list of all the healthy, non-calorie related activities that give you a quick pick-me-up on a tough day. Here a few simple examples.
One-Minute Fix : Sip black tea. A study in the journal of Psychopharmacology found that subjects who drank black tea experienced a 47% drop in their cortisol levels, the stress hormone that makes you crave food.
One-Minute Fix: self-message. It can be as simple as sitting down, taking off your shoe and placing your foot over a tennis ball. Rub your feet, one at a time, over the top of the ball until they feel relaxed and soothed. According to the study in the International Journal of Neuroscience , self-massage slows your heart rate and lowers your level of cortisol .
One-Minute Fix: Try a quick breathing exercise. Slowing down your breathing can trick your body into thinking you are going to sleep, which in turn relaxes your body. Close your eyes. Stare at the blackness of your eyelids. Slowly breathe in and out. Count each time you inhale and exhale. Continue until you get to 10.
Step Three: Practice!
There are many ways to calm yourself without calories, such as journaling, meditation techniques, connecting with others, self-message, distraction, guided imagery and ways to pamper your senses. Try out these techniques when you aren't craving food so you get them down pat before you really need them! You wouldn't want to learn how to swim in rough water. Nor do you want to learn the art of soothing yourself without food on a very stressful day. With practice, you can end emotional eating.
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How "dirty" is your diet? Why is it that some people effortlessly eat "clean" while others struggle to eat the right foods and stay on track with their food? Take this 60 second quiz to discover your food personality type today so that I can help you determine your food personality and give you actionable steps to overcome any struggles you might be having.