There was a man who had a dog with an infected wound on his leg. The Veterinarian kept treating the dog with antibiotics and the infection would clear up. However, the minute that the antibiotics were stopped the infection would return. One day, the man put his hand in the wound and there was a piece of metal in it. He removed it, cleaned the wound, and treated the dog once more with antibiotics. This time, the infection didn't return. You might be asking what this story has to do with emotional eating.
Well, emotional eating is the piece of metal in your struggle to lose weight and keep it off. If you don't get to the root of why you use food for comfort, you will continue to do so. It doesn't matter what diet you are on, or what exercise regime you follow, or even if you've had lap band surgery.
If you eat for emotional reasons, you'll have to bravely reach your hand into your wound and see what's inside.
These three simple steps can help you do that:
Step One: Find the Root
Many of the people that I work with report that they began using food for comfort at a particular stage of life, for example, when their parents got divorced, when they went away to college, when they got married or when they went through menopause. And once they began using food for something other than nutrition, they were never able to escape the pattern. Every time they use food for comfort, it keeps them stuck in whatever stage of life they were at when they first started, and they never really grow or move forward. For example Emily, a woman in her forties, who began gaining weight in college and has never been able to lose it and keep it off since, continues to feel like the anxious, insecure 18 year old every time she binges.
When did you start using food to deal with your feelings? And how can you help that younger part of yourself grow up?
Step Two: Why Do You Eat?
I often pose this question to Emotional Eaters, "Why do you eat?" The majority of people respond the same. They eat to cope with their feelings. It doesn't matter what those feelings are. "I eat when I'm happy, sad, angry, bored..." For people that eat when they're feeling bad, all eating does is replace one negative emotion with another negative emotion. Perhaps you are familiar with the pattern. You feel bad about something, or you had an interaction with someone that didn't go the way you would have liked and you over eat or go off your eating plan. The escape into food gives you a few moments of respite from whatever you were feeling but then you end up feeling guilt and shame and promising yourself that you will never overeat again. Not only is it simply replacing one bad feeling for another, it confirms to yourself that you can't really stay on track. This probably leaves you feeling discouraged and hopeless. It is a nasty vicious cycle.
If you eat when you are feeling good, eating replaces a good feeling with a negative feeling. Your happiness or success is suddenly replaced with feeling badly about yourself and your decision to eat. If you fall into this category, you might want to ask yourself why you can't allow yourself to feel good? Do you secretly think you don't deserve to be happy?
Why do you eat? Which feelings make you eat?
Step Three: If You Can See It, You Can Stop It
Right about now you're probably wondering what you can do about this. You might have been locked into a cycle of feeling something, eating to feel better and then feeling worse for years now. Emotional Eating might have happened thousands of times and that could have reinforced your feeling that you are powerless over this pattern.
When you are tempted to overeat, you can take that as a red flag that something might have troubled you. If you can see your pattern happening before your eyes, you can stop it. By going into the feeling and looking at it you might find that you don't really need or want a caramel latte or a bag of chips, what you really need is to ask for more appreciation from your boss or more affection from your spouse. You might find out something about yourself that pushes you forward through life rather than keeping you stuck. Each time you choose to confront a feeling rather than suppress it with food, you will be strengthened in your ability to face feelings head-on and your confidence will grow. Food will begin to have less power over you.
What system can you put in place so you stop and think before you overeat?
Awareness really is half the battle. The fact that you're reading this article indicates that you're ready for a change. And the more you follow these three steps the closer you'll get to pulling the emotional eating piece of metal out of your wound. Only then, will you be able to heal your heart and lose the weight.
Autor: Roger Gould, M.D.
Roger Gould, M.D.
Psychiatrist & Associate Clinical Professor, UCLA.
One of the world's leading authorities on emotional eating and adult development.
Author & Creator of Shrink Yourself.
Shrink Yourself is the Proven Online Program Designed to End Emotional Eating.
Added: August 2, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/
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