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.

Monday, January 11, 2010

10 Steps to Stop Emotional Eating

Emotional eating can add pounds and snacking is emotional eating. Resist the urge to add prepackaged snack foods like potato chips, ice cream or chocolate bars to the pantry. It's bad for you and it's bad for your children. Nibbling on snack food is hard to resist when sitting watching TV in the evenings, but there are lots of replacement foods that can be just as enjoyable, even for those who aren't trying to loose weight. Below are some tips that might help you cut down on emotional eating.

- Keep a glass of water in your hand when watching television. Water is important when trying to lose weight. It's cleansing and filling. It will lessen the cravings for snack food.

- Popcorn without the butter is a great replacement for potato chips or tortilla chips.

- Sliced vegetables like carrots, radishes or celery will give you that crunch you're used to when eating potato chips.

- Fresh fruits like oranges, apples, bananas will staunch the cravings for sweets.

- Dried fruits are also good snack foods, but don't overdo it. There are still sugars in dried fruits and because the pieces are small, there might be a tenancy to eat more.

- Blueberries are high in antioxidants and should be eaten by anyone hoping to loose weight.

- A handful of nuts is actually good for you.

- Don't be afraid to eat dry cereal as snack food at night. Choose only cereals with the lowest calories, preferably whole grain and sugar free.

- Don't give in to pre-packaged "healthy" snack food. These foods offer very little in the way of nutrients and they do contain sugars in the preservatives. Read the labels carefully. Whole and natural food has more to offer in the way of goodness.

- Taste your healthy snacks. Eat them slowly and enjoy them. Most people make the mistake of eating them to fast and not enjoying them or either putting a huge amount on their fork and having it all at once. If you eat to fast, you will want another snack soon but if you eat slow, you will not want a snack for hours.

Snacking is a hard habit to give up, but by making the adjustment slowly, replacing the potato chips a few nights per week with carrot sticks, cereal or popcorn, will make the complete change easier. You can not do this with having a negative attitude, you must know that you can lose weight and it begins with knowing you can and you will.



Autor: Eric L Knouse

Eric has been writing articles online for nearly 2 years now. Not only does this author specialize in diet, fitness and weight loss, you can also check out his latest website which provides great laptop deals.


Added: January 11, 2010
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/

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