Prevent Emotional Eating And Lose Weight
Emotional eating is one of the major causes of overeating and weight gain. To prevent obesity and to lose excess weight, you should take steps to curb your eating habit. It is estimated that nearly 75 percent of incidences of overeating are triggered by emotions and not by hunger. If you are a victim of emotional eating, identifying the triggers that make you overeat could help to stop this eating disorder.
Emotional eating triggers
Emotional problems
Feeling bored, stressed, tired, lonely, anxious or angry could cause overeating. If you have nothing to do, you might consider passing your time sitting in front of the TV with a packet of chips. To find a solution to our loneliness or depression, we often try to rely on the sugary and carbohydrate rich ‘comfort foods’. These high calorie foods, while pushing up the level of serotonin, the neurotransmitter associated with controlling moods, also pushes up our body weight. Low self-esteem is often associated with emotional eating.
Social
Emotional eating can also trigger from social factors. Peer pressure, excessive encouragement by people around you to eat or trying to fit into a group might make you eat even when you are not hungry.
Feeling deprived
In your effort to lose weight, you might follow a strict diet plan. After sometime, a sense of deprivation might sink into your mind. When you see the foods that you are missing in front of you, you could find it difficult to resist the temptation of eating these foods.
Temptation
The food commercials regularly bombarding your television screen and the availability of restaurants in your neighborhood might tempt you to overeat.
Physiological
Overeating can be triggered from certain physiological conditions. Sometimes people consider eating as a remedy for curing headache. You can overeat after skipping meals.
Emotional eating prevention
To prevent emotional eating, you should identify the triggers. Maintaining a journal of your eating habit and the foods you eat could help to determine the factors that cause emotional eating. To prevent emotional eating you should develop alternative behaviors that could help to break the bad habit. Keeping yourself busy could prevent boredom. You can develop new hobbies, go for a walk, do your housework or engage yourself in any interesting activity. To overcome stress and to lose weight, practice aerobic and deep breathing exercises.
