Do you ever walk into your grandmother’s house and the aroma of food brings you back to your childhood? Do you ever get déjà vu when you go to the fair and smell funnel cakes, blooming onions, and cotton candy? Do you crave chocolate or ice cream when you are feeling down? We all have foods that seem to comfort us when we are stressed, depressed, or bored, but are these cravings real or just a figment of our imagination?
Food often serves as a distraction to suppress negative emotions, and these emotions maybe so intertwined that you don’t even realize that you cleanse your palette with chocolate sauce after a bad day at work, breakup, or family crisis. Recent research suggests that emotional eating is very real, but the good news is there are ways to derail the chocolate train when trying to lose weight.
If you think you are an emotional eater here are some tips to try that won’t tip your scale:
- Control your stress. Try incense, lavender bubble baths, or yoga. If you are at the office and can’t get away from the chaos, try a stress ball or look at the ceiling and count to ten.
- Check your appetite. If you ate a few hours ago and your stomach isn’t growling, think twice before reaching for that bag of chips.
- Diary your mood and food. Keep track of your mood and the food you eat, you may be surprised by the pattern that emerges.
- Combat boredom. If you are really not hungry find something besides food to fill your spare time. Surf the net, call someone, or do something proactive like exercising!
- Get support. Instead of using food as a crutch, turn to family and friends in hard times.
- Get rid of the cause. If you don’t keep foods in the house that you generally turn to in times of emotional turmoil, then you have taken away the origin and the accessibility.
- Snack healthy. Try to keep low-fat, low-calorie snacks readily available when you feel the urge to splurge.
If your emotions still get the best of you then start over the next day, and try to find better ways to cope in the future. Anyone have quirks that work for them when they are feeling badly?
Source: Mayo Clinic
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