The Health Quote for today is:

“The fact is, we are always kidding ourselves into believing that the things we are in the habit of doing are the very things we should do; that the things we have learned to like are the things that are best for us.  And consciously or unconsciously resist any proposed change, even if there are plenty of evidences that the change would be for the better!”

Dr Herbert Shelton

Health Quote of the Day 11th March 09

Today’s health quote is:

“Many of the seemingly good feelings that junk-fooders experience are associated with stimulation from toxic ingestion of poisoned food – and not from high quality nutrition at all.

KEEP AWAY FROM JUNK FOOD!”

Dr Alec Burton, 1985

Previous Post: Part Two: What Fuels Emotional Eating

The fuel to emotional eating is emotional hunger. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, you will always have emotional hunger. It is what makes us human but this doesn’t mean we have no hope of dealing with it. The emotional hunger isn’t the problem; it is how you deal with it that really counts.

At the moment, the only way you may know how to deal with emotions is to eat or you may be the type who uses food on certain occasions to deal with an emotion. You may even be someone who doesn’t think they use food for comfort but doesn’t really know if they do or not.

For me, I was really unaware of the way I used food for comfort. When I started stripping my diet down and eating low fat foods, I really started to see that I did use food for emotional comfort and a LOT of the time too. I still have moments now where I struggle to keep awareness of my feelings. I am lucky though to have some great support through it.

When you eat for emotional reasons, you can become so attached to dealing with the ups and downs of life with food that any suggestion that you can actually stop this makes you nervous. In Part One: An Introduction to Emotional Eating I mentioned people going into a blind panic and bingeing, this is what I am talking about here. You are dependent on food for comfort. It is like security to you, no wonder it makes you nervous if that was to be taken away! Many people simply cannot imagine being able to handle a bad day without food there for comfort.

When you are an emotional eater, you really do feel truly hungry and when the craving grips you, you can’t tell its not really hunger. People who are not emotional eaters usually eat less when they are troubled by emotion hunger. Their emotional hunger doesn’t feel like physical hunger.

Emotional hunger and the feeling that you are truly hungry, has so much power over you that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it. Have you driven to the store late at night just to get some junk food?

There is such power in emotional hunger that if you do not deal with the underlying issues to it, you will always be at its mercy. It will control you.

Some signs of emotional hunger:

• It results from something emotionally upsetting.

• It has a quick onset. It comes on rapidly.

• It demands food immediately.

• It doesn’t notice how why or what is being eaten.

• It can even demand more food even after a person is stuffed.

• It demands particular foods to be fulfilled (like cake and chocolate).

If you are compelled to eat in this way and cannot be patient, then you know it is most likely an emotional issue you are dealing with.

Are you an emotional eater? Do you feel compelled to eat in stressful situations?

Below I have put together some questions you may want to take the time to answer if you feel that you could be an emotional eater. These will help you get a better understanding of yourself and your eating.

• Is it hard for you to see emotional eating in your life?How hard do you find it to see it?Describe the instances where you think you emotionally eating.Do you think that this is an obstacle to your weight loss?

• Do you think you can tell the difference when you are experiencing emotional hunger versus physical hunger?

• Have you ever mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger? Do you eat out of boredom for example? Has it become such a habit that only on reflection you can see what you are doing, as opposed to in the moment it happens?

• Why do you think you use food rather than address the emotion directly? Do you always use food to deal with emotions?

Activity: During your day be more aware of your eating habits and notice when you eat out of true hunger versus emotional hunger. Note down whether your feelings on this. Were you surprised at how much you used it to numb yourself?

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

 Health quote today is:

“Self-care is paying attention to a beneficial way of living your life – so that your exchanges and your interactions with other people are loving and caring and so that your attitudes toward yourself are that way too“.

Kennethh Pelletier, 1977

Previous Post:  Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

For many people, simply following a balanced diet and exercising is not enough to lose weight. Many find it impossible to stick to a diet and to control what they are eating, despite their best efforts. Maybe you are one of these people?

You already know how to lose weight – you know you must eat more nutritionally but you seem to slip up at every turn. So what is getting in your way?

The answer is most likely a mix of physical addiction to food and emotional eating. Emotional eating is the hardest part to overcome and is what I will discuss below (physical addiction will be discussed in a later blog post).

The thing I have found is that a lot of the information available out there (including diet programs) is that they do not addresss this issue and if they do, they just touch on it.

However this issue is a big one and can stand in the way of someone achieving the healthy lifestyle changes they want. Especially if you are following a diet that restricts you in anyway. For some this can lead to a blind panic and before you know it you will have just engulfed a large chocolate cheesecake and will still be wanting more.

Food is a security blanket for many and to be restricted can make us feel vulnerable and exposed, even if we aren’t completely aware of it (which we usually aren’t because by the time we have become rational again, after a good old binge, we are too numb to feel anything).

What is emotional eating?

Emotional eating means to eat to satisfy emotional hunger. You eat food for comfort or a way to help you cope in life. You eat for reasons other than nutritional.

We all do this. Emotional eating is part of our culture. We use food to celebrate, to deal with upset, to deal with a hard day at work and even boredom (ever sit in front of the TV eating mindlessly?) It is a part of our culture. The problem with this is, it isn’t really seen as a problem in society, but it is one.

We spend so much time numbing ourselves, that when we do not have an opportunity to do so, we don’t know how best to deal with the emotions that arise in us. Food also has physically addictive properties within it that can affect our mood as well (I will discuss this later in a blog post) so everything can be very overwhelming. When we don’t live in the present moment and allow emotions to flow through us, but instead numb ourselves, we carry a lot of baggage around unknowingly. Sometimes this can surface in a bout of aggression or other form. The thing is, if we don’t face it, don’t learn to deal with our emotions then we just continue to live a life of numbing, of bingeing or craving. You miss out on the potential of life, of embracing emotions.

People suffering with this way of eating are driven to eat so they don’t have to face what is bothering them internally. They become addicted to the way they handle life. This is why dieting and calorie restriction doesn’t work. And since most diets do not teach you about emotional eating, we never become fully aware of it and think it is something wrong with us.

If others can do it, why can’t I?

Unless you learn to stop emotional eating and deal with your emotions in the present moment, you will find it impossible to lose weight and keep it off. Not to mention you will find it pretty hard to enjoy life fully if you are constantly battling with this issue with your weight loss.

If this resonates with you, then you are not alone and you can overcome it.

I will be writing about emotional eating this week and next, so stay tuned.

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part Two: What Fuels Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

 Today’s health quote:

Every mirror that is sold should have an inscription:

“The person you see in this mirror is the person most responsible for your own health and happiness”

Dr. Keki Sidhwa, 1984.

Previous Post: Health Quote of the Day

 Today’s health quote is:

“If good health is the product of right living, sickness or ill health must necessarily result from wrong living. Like causes produce like effects. The effects that follow obedience and those that follow transgressions are as unlike as possible. Life is lengthened and filled with joy by living in accordance with nature’s teachings: it is not only shortened – but reendered miserable and worthless – by pursuing an opposite course”.

Dr Susannah Way Dodds, 1915

Previous Post: Fasting One Day A Month is Good

I am currently delving into the world of fasting – juice fasting, water fasting, herb fasting and all the other types of fasting out there. I am curious and interested in whether all those types of fasts out there are beneficial or just someone trying to sell you something. I am also interested in fasting myself if there is some validation in it, after I am done nursing my son. My research is a work in progress but I shall have some blog entries up soon about fasting and its benefits and negatives for health and weight loss. So we shall see if it works out.

Anyway, this morning I came across an article on The Independent website about fasting (water fasting specifically).

According to the article fasting one day a month can provide you with huge health benefits and add years to your life.

Dr Mark Mattson, of the National Institue of Ageing, an American Research body, has done a numerous amount of studies involving rats and mice. He explains that putting mice and rats on fasting diets resulted in the them living longer, developing fewer cancers and showing reduce cognitive decline in aging, compared to animals with continuous access to food.

There have also been some studies with humans that appear to back this up and I certainly have read my fair few stories about the benefits of fasting (water fasting as opposed to others).

The article suggests not only fasting to be beneficial but also calorie restriction to be benficial.

“According to Dr Marc Hellerstein, a professor of endocrinology, metabolism and nutrition at the University of California at Berkeley, our bodies are “brilliant” at reacting to not eating. “We’re not good at responding to too many calories, but we are very good at responding to fasting. Fasting, in itself, is not an unhealthy process.”

The article then goes on to talk about how difficult it can be for one to fast and have the self-control to be able to do so. I agree with this, but only because most of us have physiological addictions to foods that can prevent us from having the self-control we need. If we are binge eating as well, I don’t think fasting would be helpful unless it was supervised, controlled and for a more extended period of time. Once one has done this intitial bout of fasting (to rid ourselves of the physical addiction to certain foods such as sugar, dairy) – adding fasting in once a month may then be plausible and great.

Anyone considering a fast though should get a consultation with a professional to see if they are “suitable” for one. Not everyone is suitable so its worth making sure you are.  You should also do the fast on a day where you can rest as opposed to one where you are running about.  Your body is given digestive rest but it is also beneficial to give complete physical rest too.

I think fasting once a month is a great idea because it can teach us self control and discipline. This is what is often lacking in one’s life who overeats or is overweight, so fasting could be a healthy thing to incorporate in one’s life, ONCE they have started making good progress in their weight loss endeavours.

To read the full article:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/features/the-nofood-diet-1635808.html

Previous Post: Nutritious Snacks: Healthy Snacks for Someone Trying to Lose Weight

I am forever seeing the question “What are some healthy snacks for someone trying to lose weight?”. I have even been asked this question time after time and always answer with the same thing time after time. Unfortunately many seem to be disappointed with the answer but I think this is more due to lack of understanding than not wanting to eat what I suggest.

The answer I give is very simple but is often overlooked because people see this food as insufficient or not filling. So what is it I suggest?

FRUIT!

We have had it drilled into us that it is important to have our 5-a-day. We have had it drilled into us that a fruit snack is something like 1 banana or 1 apple. This is exactly why people do not wish to turn to fruit for snacking purposes. It doesn’t fill us up, it doesn’t provide nutritional satisfaction or emotional comfort.

Fruit is, along with greens, packed full of essentially all the nutrients our body needs, but it is not calorie-dense, so in order to be fulfilled nutritionally we need to be eating much more than 1 banana or 1 apple. Fruit is also not heavy like other foods such as grains and meat, or packed full of addictive substances, so we do not get the emotional fulfilment many of us want from food from fruit. We may not even realize that we want emotional comfort from food. I didn’t realize how much I used food as an aid to emotional issues until I started becoming aware of my eating habits. I still now find it sometimes difficult, but I find comfort in my husband, distraction or exercise.

So how much fruit should we be eating? A lot! If you find yourself hungry, eat 5-6 apples or 5-6 bananas or even more than this (or less) depending on how you feel. Listen to your body and stop eating when you are satisfied. If you incorporate fruits (as well as greens) into your diet more and more, your cravings for unhealthy snacks will decrease and you will feel much better physically and emotionally.

If you are out on the run, and lugging 5 plus bits of fruit about seems a bit big annoyance, take some dates out or maybe some sun-dried fruits. Make sure though that if you take dried fruits out with you, you have plenty of water. Whereas if you have 5 apples, they will help keep you hydrated, you need to replace the water missing from dried fruits with drinking water.

The more fruit you eat the more you will learn to love it and the more you will miss it when you don’t have it. Fruit is very good for you – it will satisfy that sweet tooth for you much better than a chocolate bar or candy will and won’t leave you moody or tired.

Previous Post: Calorie Counting: Determining How Many Calories You Need