Stop Emotional Eating

Do you know when you how to stop emotional eating? Are You Frustrated because you know you are not able to stop emotional eating ? You may know you are feeling emotional discomfort but you may not allow yourself to experience them.

You may discover that you when you feel uncomfortable sensations your automatic reaction is to use emotional eating to sooth yourself.

Some people have difficulty figuring out what emotions they are feeling.Others try to avoid feelings at all costs. The major cause of emotional eating is that feelings are considered bad and eating is an ideal method avoidance.

The meaning of feelings and Emotions can be very different depending on early experiences with them.


Do you Consider it Bad to Experience Feelings and Emotions

Do you find it difficult to stop emotional eating because you have a belief feelings and emotions are bad because they are connected to self-destructive or violent behavior towards others.

Memories of violent behavior or frightful outbursts can be associated with feeling terrified and get attached to the idea that if one feels angry or sad something bad will happen.To cope with this shutting down or medicating may be survival. Some children learn the moment they begin to sense the discomfort of a feeling they must shut it down. Often people turn to food to sooth or numb out these feelings.




When an individual has had difficult experiences as a child, they often become fearful of feeling to much emotion because often their past memories or experiences can be of adults around them loosing control due to emotional outbursts or being immobilized by depression.

Depression can be serious and often professional treatment should be sought. There are however, somethings that one can try before seeking professional help.

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Most approaches to the treatment of depression offer solutions that only work in the short-term - a "do these things and you won't be depressed anymore" approach.

Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account the fact that 75% of people who recover from depression will suffer a relapse sometime in their life.If you're only focused on getting rid of depression you're bound to feel a failure if you become depressed again. And you're likely to feel worse than the previous time because you've got another failure to add to your list!



Tips to Stop Emotional Eating


Separating Feelings from Behavior

People usually try to avoid feelings because emotions can cause one to feel very uncomfortable. You may associate past behavior with feelings. Feelings can trigger memories of terrifying or scary behavior and loss of control.

In trying to stop emotional eating, it is important to begin to separate the emotion from the behavior. If one is able to cope with emotions as they arise they are less likely to suppress the emotion and lose control because the emotion becomes overwhelming. In order to separate emotions from behavior one must begin to recognize when they feel certain emotions. Sometimes a chart that shows emotions can be helpful.


Learn to Recongnise Emotions as they Arise

An important part that helps one Stop Emotional Eating involves recognizing your feelings.This may be very foreign concept if you are not use to dealing with your feelings. One technique that may help is that as you go through your day you can notice feelings that you may be feeling. Another technique that could be useful is that when you feel a craving for specific foods,check to see if you are hungry, if not see if you think of a thought or emotion.This is a time you might pause to see what is going on emotionally.If you can write these down you will probably see a pattern.

Trouble Identifying Emotions See Below Some Tools that May Help.


Understanding Feelings

The bad news about feelings is that they are uncontrollable.This is a major obstacle to stop emotional eating. They are very different from logic. They make sense in an emotional way that is often unknown to us.They come,they go and bring with them a wide range of experiences some pleasant some unpleasant some devastating.

Feelings can move us up or down, depending upon who or what we are reacting to.

We have words to describe our internal feeling experiences.Some of these include happy, sad, angry, hurt,excited , depressed, frustrated, anxious, as well as many others


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The journey To Stop emotional eating can move foward as one can accept that feelings are part of human experience. We can experience them and recover.

Many people become afraid that an unpleasant feeling will never end. However,usually we go through the feeling and are better able to cope with situations.If we know we can weather the feeling and know we will recover, hopefully, the need to avoid will lessen and the need to use food to block out these feelings will subside.


Specific Feelings Can Give You Information Interactions and Situations

In helping us to understand ourselves rather than thinking of feelings as enemies they can really be our friends. They tell us who we are by their energy and flow and by their relationship to when we are doing to much by our experience of overwhelm. Feelings can relieve us of tension understood.

Anxiety can be a primary or secondary feeling. As a primary feeling it can help you see something you fear. As a secondary emotion it can be a cover up for a more difficult feeling that you might be experience. Often these feelings are anger or sadness. We often fear being out of control.

When we feel anger it can mean that a situation is not right for you.Paying attention to anger and things that are not right for you can help you set boundaries and/or choose other options which can help reduce emotional eating. Feelings can help us decelop and expand our understanding of ourselves and our interactions with others.

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