Overview

An eating disorder is a compulsion to eat, or avoid eating, that negatively affects both one's physical and mental health. Eating disorders are all encompassing. They affect every part of the person's life. According to the authors of Surviving an Eating Disorder, "feelings about work, school, relationships, day-to-day activities and one's experience of emotional well being are determined by what has or has not been eaten or by a number on a scale." Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa are the most common eating disorders generally recognized by medical classification schemes, with a significant diagnostic overlap between the two. Together, they affect an estimated 5-7% of females in the United States during their lifetimes. There is a third type of eating disorder currently being investigated and defined - Binge Eating Disorder. This is a chronic condition that occurs when an individual consumes huge amounts of food during a brief period of time and feels totally out of control and unable to stop their eating. It can lead to serious health conditions such as morbid obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

How to Stop Emotional Eating Now

Most binge eating or compulsive overeating is linked to emotional eating. People overeat when they are overcome by negative emotions. Although being an emotional eater is a hard habit to break, it is not an impossible habit to break.

The first step you need to break the cycle of emotional binge eating is to identify what emotions make you binge eat. An easy way to do that is to keep a detailed journal. In your journal you should track what you eat, how much you eat, what time of day you eat, and how you are feeling when you eat. Initially you should keep this journal for at least a two-week period.

Then analyse everything you recorded. Go through the journal with a highlighter and highlight all the times you were compulsively overeating. Then write down the emotional you recorded feeling on a separate sheet of paper. Go through each day of your journal writing down the emotions on a separate list. When you are done, look at the list of emotions. What emotion do you see over and over again on the list?

Common emotions that cause compulsive overeating include loneliness, sadness, depression, and anger. Once you identify the emotion causing you to overeat, you need to create a game plan for what you can do when you are feeling those emotions. For example, if you are feeling lonely, you call a friend or family member instead of going to the refrigerator. If you eat when you are angry, you should take up a physical activity or buy an exercise video you can throw in when you are angry. Exerting yourself physically is a great way to work through negative emotions; thirty minutes of kick-boxing can help most people get through anger.

If you can't distract yourself, and you feel you need to eat, restrict yourself to eating fresh fruits and vegetables. You will certainly be less likely to binge on them. Another good idea is to avoid having foods you commonly binge on readily available in your home or work.

Continue keeping a food journal after you have identified your emotional triggers. This will allow you to track your progress.



Autor: Irsan Komarga

Do visit Irsan's latest website at LG wireless phones which contains the best deals on T mobile wireless phones and other information about wireless phones.


Added: November 25, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

No comments: