Principal #7 Honor your feelings without using food
When you are sad maybe you reach for the ice cream or chocolate, when you are happy maybe you celebrate with pizza, when you are bored you grab the bag of chips, when you are stressed you choose something salty, when you are tired maybe something sweet. This is called emotional eating; eating due to emotions instead of hunger. Many emotions have their attached "comfort" food, the food that you turn to when experiencing a certain emotion.
Instead of turning to these foods, we need to find ways to deal with these feelings. We need to teach our bodies that food will not fix these feelings and may in the long run only make them worse. We must recognize that we turn to these certain foods when we are experiencing certain emotions, and learn how to handle this feelings in a healthier way.
Below is a list of the differences between physical hunger verses emotional hunger:
Next time you reach for food, ask yourself "am I really hungry?" Learn the difference between true hunger and just eating due to various emotions. As someone who now sits in front of a computer for most of the day with work, I find myself snacking a lot more than I should, usually it is just mindless, bored snacking, but the problem is I might not even really be hungry. Acknowledging this emotion, will help me to plan accordingly , either by only having healthy snacks available, such as carrot and celery sticks, or by putting my foot down to eating in front of my computer. This way if it is truly hunger that is causing me to want to eat, then I must get up to go get food, as it will not be as easily accessible.
Let us all work on honoring our feelings in a more healthy and productive way, without first turning to food, which may only mask the issue, and leave us possibly feeling worse than we did before.
Pura Vida!
Alica Ryan, NTP
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