Does your mood affect your eating habits? Do you turn to sweets when you’re sad? Do you stuff your face with junk food when you’re stressed? Eating unhealthly and binge eating due to your negative emotions is common and can become a habit that's hard to break. The Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels shares her five steps to recognize and overcome emotional eating.
- Step 1: When you think you're hungry, you need to stop yourself right as you're going for the fridge. Just learn to stop yourself and ask yourself in that moment, "Am I even hungry?"
- Step 2: Evaluate. Is your stomach growling? Do you feel weak? Are you tired? When was the last time you ate? Was it three or four hours ago? Ask yourself those questions. The first thing to do is write down, "Okay, I'm hungry." On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the hungriest), I want you to ask yourself, "How hungry am I?" Are you a 1, or a 5, or a 10?
- Step 3: I want you to write down if, in fact, you're hungry and the last time you ate. What's going on for you emotionally? Take a look—explore yourself and your feelings. What's going on? "Well, you know what, I'm anxious, man." "We have layoffs at the office." "I'm going through a break up." Identify the emotion and what's going on inside of you.
- Step 4: Now that you've recognized it, you need to face it in order to conquer it. So now you've got to look at this and ask yourself, "Can this issue be resolved in the now?" Do you have the ability to deal with it? Did you have a fight with your mom? Can you call her and rectify it? Maybe your dog died. Who knows? Sometimes things just suck.
- Step 5: If you're at the point where you can't resolve the issue, you need to find ways of nurturing yourself and pampering yourself that are not food related. Know yourself. Do you collect stuff? Do you like to go on eBay and thrift shop? What are your hobbies? Put together a family album. Write your memoirs. Do stuff that's incompatible with self-destruction and that will help. That's why a lot of the contestants on the ranch—when they were working out so hard and taking such good care of themselves—often, I think, didn't eat enough because they begin to associate eating with being self-destructive.
At the end of the day, here's also what I would say: “Sometimes, you know what, it just doesn't work.” Make a healthier choice. Have air-popped popcorn, not Cheetos. Have sugar-free Popsicles for 25 calories instead of Ben & Jerry's. When all else fails, make a healthier choice.
Comments
Date: 01/27/2009 - 06:26 pm
I eat when I'm bored.
Date: 01/06/2009 - 10:29 am
If these tips helped, Geneen Roth's books like Feeding the Hungry Heart, and several others, will really help!
Date: 01/05/2009 - 07:05 pm
I will use those questions to ask myself if I am really hungry. Most times I am not really hungry. I used to tell myself that if an apple does not sound good than I cannot be hungry. Emotional eating got me in trouble and I will used these ideas to get me where I want to go. Thank you.
Date: 12/10/2008 - 11:01 am
I overeat most times just around my menstrual cycle. Last year my GP sent me to a nutritionist who told me that I was not eating enough .... although at 13.5 stones according to the Clinical rules I was clinically obese. She ran me through a series of trainings and questions, gave me walker meter and told me to try and achieve at least ten thousand steps a day, and start eating....She gave me a trial list ( after asking me for the foods I eat) to try out for two weeks indicating that I should at least lose a couple pounds in the first week. I followed through and after one week I lost 4lbs. on the second week I went down an additional 2lbs. I charted the numbers on my walker meter in a logbook and did a few other exercises and pilates and within a month of this I had gone down to 13stones. I wasn't ashamed to eat among the slim girls at work anymore and could have my favorite cadbury fruitNnut chocolate without one bit of guilt and losing the weight gracefully. The only setback now is that I moved to the Caribbean and the sort of foods I enjoy eating are over the price mark.....the baby came and so is the weight....
Date: 12/03/2008 - 01:07 pm
Finally! Steps to address emotional eating. I will do this and I pray it will help me lose this weight that was from med's the Dr put me on. Thing is that I am not hungry much and I don't like eating when I am not hungry. I feel like I am wasting food. I eat when I am hungry and now some are saying that you need to keep yourself full so you won't overeat. That is a big problem with me and with how much more things cost and just can't afford it. Sometimes it is cheaper to buy 1 $1 burger. Is that really wrong? I have got to lose this weight and desperate to try anything I can afford.