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Take time out and find some inspiration
Are you happy with your weight?
Sometimes you just have to, don’t you? Reach for the chocolate bar and treat yourself to a packet of crisps. My weakness is cheese – what’s yours?
Perhaps you’re running around stressed and tired and you just have to grab the snacks. Or maybe you’re bored or lonely so you eat to divert your attention. We all need to indulge from time to time and this is fine when you do it once in a while, AND if you are happy with your weight.
Are you happy with your weight?
Do you find it difficult to stop eating certain foods?
What are the reasons that stop you from not controlling your food intake?
You can discover all of this with weight management coaching and resolve your eating issues forever.
Last week, I spent several hours on a piece of work and I found myself getting up and going to ask my colleague for chocolate. I’d been concentrating really hard, put in a lot of effort but hit a brick wall with my thinking. I felt frustrated and I was procrastinating.
All my body actually needed was to take a walk and have a healthy energy boost but an apple or a banana wouldn’t do – I just had to have chocolate. I was eating in response to a message somewhere in me that said eating chocolate would stop me feeling frustrated and make me feel better.
Eating in response to an emotion is normal, but when you use food as a solution to a bigger problem and become overweight this is concerning. Or, you might avoid food to attempt to solve a different problem and being underweight can be equally dangerous.
Think about it for a minute. Someone who is feeling unhappy for whatever reason – they might not even know it themselves – but they use food as a quick way to make them feel better. We all know that sugar gives us an energy boost and the food causes chemical changes in your body – on your tongue, in your stomach.
The act of eating gives you a short term placebo effect or ‘high’. So eating makes you feel happy. The underlying ‘problem’ – the reason you felt unhappy – goes away temporarily. When the effect of the food wears off, you feel unhappy again and so you learn to keep eating over a period of time to take your mind off the problem….and the weight piles on.
Finally you get to the point where you feel so unhappy with your weight that you decide to diet. You deny yourself the treats that made you feel better and you haven’t got the solution to your problem anymore. You can’t eat the treats that stopped you feeling miserable so you feel even worse.
And so it continues……
What are the triggers for people to over (or under) eat?
Well – who knows, but in my experience as a weight management coach you might use food for:
Comfort or Consolation
Are you lonely or do you feel a sense of loss or perhaps that you feel ‘empty’? Do you reach for the food as comfort for your feelings? Do you lack confidence and reach for the snacks when you are feeling particularly low, or have felt embarrassed, or humiliated, as a way of comforting yourself? Are you seeking attention by not eating?
An energy boost when you’re tired
Do you often work for long periods and miss meals? Is it the cake or chocolate bar that you grab on the way home as you’re running late because you haven’t listened to your body earlier in the day and eaten properly? What was the reason you didn’t eat properly – trying to impress your boss? Working through lunch to meet a deadline?
A reward when you’re happy or have achieved something
Do you overeat to celebrate or to enjoy yourself? Are there healthier ways of rewarding yourself?
To take your mind off a problem
Are you in a relationship that isn’t working? Is a family member or friend affecting your emotional well being? Are you being defiant against someone and proving a point with your behaviour?
To relieve Stress or worry
Are you juggling too many balls, finding it difficult to cope with everyday life? Do you turn to food as a stress release? The sugar in food hit’s the brain causing chemical changes and altered feelings.
To avoid doing something else
Do you eat as a distraction or when you’re procrastinating? What are you avoiding doing when you are eating?
Whatever the reason you are using food, it’s a behaviour that you’ve learned. Where did you learn to do that? Are you using food as an inappropriate solution?
Until next time: Happiness comes from within – it is a state of mind.
A kit kat won’t make you happy, and neither will being slim
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About the author
Name: Kate Box
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Website: http://www.katebox.co.uk/
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