Did you know that emotional eating is one of the top reasons clients can’t lose weight when they come to me?

Emotional eating affects more people than you may realize and it varies greatly to what extent they are affected. Some individuals deal with it occasionally and others struggle with it daily. The big positive is that emotional eating is a learned behavior and that means we can unlearn it with the right tool, patience and support. No matter how out of control you may feel your eating is right now when it comes to emotions and food, you have the ability to unlearn it with a little time and effort and kick it to the curb for good. Won’t that be nice.

When you overcome emotional eating you will no longer be at the mercy of your emotions and derailed from your weight loss efforts. You will be able to deal with feelings and stress that normally send you to the candy machine or fast food restaurant. It is an incredibly freeing experience and once you understand how to do it, it becomes easier and easier each time. So how do we start to overcome emotional eating that leads to overeating and often an eating binge?

The first step is to start to observe your eating patterns. When you first start this it can be difficult, because you often find that your emotions and thoughts are triggering your “need” or want for food.

We crave certain foods when these feelings, emotions and stresses occur because they effect our pleasure center in our brain and the food becomes an instant distraction and you avoid the feeling that was triggered. It could be as simple as a comment from your spouse or the stress of getting your kids off to school in the morning that triggers your emotional eating reaction.

Start to journal when, what and why you are eating is the turning point to stopping the trigger of emotional eating and turning the hunger switch off. If you can start to observe yourself you can then start to work on new behaviors to put in place instead of food. When you start to resist the food and start to replace it with another activity your brain will start to process the information differently. Instead of associating calming yourself with food it will start to substitute in the other behavior using it to give your body the time to adjust and calm itself without the use of food.

Just observe yourself and what you are feeling. Keep the journal for the first week or two and start to get an understanding of what is triggering you. Next, think of one to five healthier behaviors you can do to substitute for eating. Like taking a walk, a nap, reading a book, going outside for some fresh air, calling a friend or family member, you get the picture. Just pick things you enjoy and will give your body and mind something to do other than eat. You want to disrupt the learned habit of eating for distraction and to engage the pleasure center in the brain with food. After about a week of observing and journal you can start to substitute the healthier behaviors.

Action Step: Observe, what you eat and when you eat and write it in your journal. If you know what is pushing you towards food then write it down, but if you don’t that’s OK too. Sometimes things aren’t as obvious as we think and it may take a while, even days before we figure out what’s bothering us.

For now just write down what you observe. Make a list of things you can do that would make you feel better that is unrelated to food. When we emotionally eat we often do so calm ourselves down both physically and mentally.

When I did this exercise I found that I usually was anxious about something and also tired. I thought if I could just lay down for ten or fifteen minutes it would help. I would never give myself permission to do that so instead I ate. Once I did give myself permission I found that I was able to calm down and re-energize in a way that did not include food. It worked almost immediately.

I found the first day I tried this I went to lay down or sat quietly 3 or 4 tomes throughout the day for 10 minutes. I did some deep breathing as well. I never would have thought it would have worked so well but it did.

Later, I found that this method was in line with how our brain works in relation to how it body responds to stress. So keep and open mind. Remember don’t expect perfection just keep an open mind and start a small, slight shift. You can do that.

Remember to get your free weight loss journal Weight Loss Journaland your free MP3 download titled Unstoppable Weight Loss here Weight Loss Coach

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