Breaking free from emotional eating to lose weight is to start by understanding that the brain has two built-in directives: survival and pleasure seeking. Which of the two determines our eating habits? Both!
The Pleasure-Seeking Program
First, Since you were a child, how many holidays have you celebrated? Add to that the special occasions and birthdays, such as weddings and anniversaries, and you may total between ten and sixteen per year. All of these occasions brought with them friends, relatives, attention, love, warmth, and what else? You got it--lots and lots food!
What happened when you cleaned your room or ate your peas? You were rewarded with what? Dessert! Or on Sunday Daddy take the entire family to? Friendlys?
Little wonder your brain often says, "Eat, you deserve it;it tastes good; you deserve it; you'll feel better."
The Survival Program
When you were a baby and you cried-for most any reason-what was the answer? The bottle, right? Anytime you were frustrated or upset, the bottle was there. The result was that you learned an early association with food and frustration. And when you ate your baby food-especially carrots and peas, you were rewarded with kudos and related food with pleasurable feelings.
Later when you were a toddler, maybe you approached another little boy or girl and were rejected, or your teacher yelled at you because you didn't have your homework, or you didn't have a date for a dance, or you broke or lost a toy, or some other calamity happened, and you ran home crying, "Mommy, Mommy, the world's coming to an end." And what did Mommy say? "Come have some cake and milk. You'll feel better in a little while." Certainly, a little while later you felt better. All this time you have thought it was the cookies and milk, when it was really just the passing of time. No wonder your brain often says, "Given all the bull you've put up with you deserve something" or "Eat, you've had a rough day." or "Eat. If you don't, it'll get thrown away and you'll be wasting money," or "Eat. Be nice to yourself and treat yourself to something good!"
The Result
For many years this was OK. Then at some point you discovered that you had a weight problem. At what age? Ten, sixteen, forty six? The age is irrelevant. The first five or six years of your life are the most formative. By the time you realized you had a weight problem and needed to lose weight, you had already been perfectly conditioned to eat in response to pleasure and/or survival.
Little wonder then when you feel
* upset
* frustrated
* rejected
* excited
* bored
* glad
* down
* confused
your brain suggests eating. The result is the program.
The obvious answer to stop overeating would simply be to eliminate emotional eating and stop the program.
However, because most of us have been trained to deny our feelings, the brain doesn't say, "Eat, you're happy." It says, "Eat because it looks good." Even when we're bored, the brain doesn't say, "Eat because you're bored;" it says, "Eat because it would taste good," or "Eat because there's nothing else to do."
Because of this, the emphasis is on having an eating problem rather than a problem handling emotions which by the way are a reaction to our various stressors in life. The bad news is that our emotional reactions to stress become stressors in themselves and this is because of our limited experiences in managing emotions. The goal to breaking free from emotional eating is to learn to acknowledge emotions as they are felt--end eating emotional--stop diluting emotions with food.
An effective approach to losing weight involves asking questions "What is missing here? Why are people not getting the results they are promised? It is clearly insane to keep using the same approach when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on breaking free from emotional eating than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas results are there by learning about emotional eating. Stop emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life.
» left by Greg Gallon(0) (5 hours 37 minutes ago.) New Comment!
We all operated on pain and pleasure and once of the best ways to start losing weight is to stop letting these negative emotions drive you to food and stop associating eating to pleasure and relief from these emotions. Once you learn how to manage your states you'll be able to break free of that endless cycle.
» left by Richard Kuhns from NYC area (5 hours 26 minutes ago.) New Comment!
There are no such thing as negative emotions--we label them as negative--they are only different energy levels and it's our learned perceptions of the that become the stressor.
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