This is a video of a talk by Professor Rozalind Gruben/Graham on the social and emotional aspects of eating. It is a great introduction to the social and emotional aspects and I wholeheartedly recommend you watch it (along with the other parts to it).
Here is part one:
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:
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.
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
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
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
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There are lots of programs advocating the use of counting the calories you consume – some even have point systems. Although I don’t agree with such programs, as I believe we should listen to our bodies to determine *true hunger* over cravings or boredom, I think it can be useful to begin with to see a rough estimate of how many calories you need to eat as opposed to what you are eating. It can also be helpful if you are choosing to eat a high fruit/greens diet because it can be hard to get enough calories.
In order to determine the calories you need to consume, first take your ideal weight (not your current weight but the weight you want to get to) in pounds and times this by ten. This is your base need. So if you want to weight 130lbs then your base need would be 1300 calories. Add to this roughly 200-300 calories or maybe more depending on how active you are through the day. If you just sit at a desk all day you may not need anymore over 200. Then if you exercise that day add another 300-500 depending on intensity.
So for someone who wanted to be 130lbs (1300), had a fairly active day (300 calories) and had an intense work out (500 calories), this person would need to consume around 2100 calories that day.
This is a rough estimate and it isn’t strict. If you feel like eating more than you probably need to, if you feel that this is too much it may very well be. The best way to know whether you are hungry, truly hungry, is to try the fruit test. If you don’t want to eat fruit then it is probably a craving/emotion/boredom.
Try not to be strict with the calories but try to be more intune with your body and what it NEEDS. This will help you maintain your success at losing weight and will be much better in terms of not only being able to listen to your body effectively, but not having to keep a diary of how many calories you have had and if a food goes over them!
However to begin with yes working out rough estimates can be helpful and you can see if you are doing well listening to your body or not. Useful sites to help you count calories are www.nutridiary.com and www.fitday.com. It is free to set up accounts with both.
