Wednesday, May 19, 2010
emotional eating
i eat when stressed and i am stressed. tonight i had a friendly's butterfinger sundae and it was effing good, but i came home and found out it is about 800 calories. holy mother of god, that can not be good. I am really having a hard time with trying to get this eating under control. I have done WW in the past and I really liked how you had to track your points. I do not want to do it again b/c I believe that it is just that - you track your points, lose the weight and then you stop tracking and gain the weight. But I would like to start tracking my calories and at least feel accountable for the sweets and what they are doing.
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Emotional eating is a relatively new term and highly misunderstood. What's important to realize is that there was programming done at a very early age driven by the fact that the brain has two primary directives–pleasure seeking and survival. Early on we learned to associate food with survival and pleasure seeking. The good emotions such as happiness, joy, elation and so on are obviously associated with pleasure seeking and frustration, boredom, confusion, anger, depression and so on are associated with survival.
ReplyDeleteThe sad news is that most programs to lose weight or deal with binging focus on food and never deal with emotional programming.
The bottom line is that focusing on what you do or do not eat to control or lose weight is like trying to fly by flapping your arms. To be successful it's important to focus on the stress of the emotion and learn to take it straight rather than diluting with food.
Now for the misunderstanding: Those who provide direction on dealing with emotional eating usually focus on the stress that led to the emotion or provide advice on how to reduce or avoid the emotion. But that's not the answer. The answer is to learn how to actually feel and embrace the emotion and articles giving you six or ten steps to conquer emotional eating is like expecting a first grader to pass the high school equivalency test. The result is that 95% of all diets and eating programs fail—even those focusing on emotional eating. Why? For a free report please go to http://www.EmotionalEatingCure.com
In any weight loss endeavor, it's important to remember that the brain has two primary directives–pleasure seeking and survival. From childhood we have learned to associate food with both. Associated with pleasure are what most call good emotions–happiness, joy, elation and so on. Associated with survival are what most call bad emotions–frustration, boredom, confusion, anger, depression and so on.
Unfortunately most programs to lose weight or deal with binging focus on food and forget the emotional programming.
Are you my twin??? I eat when I'm emotional too and I know I'm doing it, but it's so hard to stop! I'm a WW lifetime member too. I don't follow the points now, but every once in a while I'll pick them back up and it just reminds me of where I'm straying. Once I stop counting, I can do so because I'm back on track with portion control and making better choices. It's kind of my wake up when I fall off the wagon! :)
ReplyDeleteI hear you on the emotional eating! I think WW is a great program, but I got a little obsessive about counting and recounting points.
ReplyDeleteI think what Colleen said though might be an idea. Maybe if you track points or calories for the short-term, then you will refresh your memory of the portions and food you can have daily. :)