Julie thought she did most things ‘right'
when it came to eating and exercise. She chose healthy foods
most of the time, thought she ate only when hungry most
of the time, and got the recommended amount and kind of
physical activity. So she was dumbfounded that her weight
continued to fluctuate up and down the scale. After listening
to some of the presentations during her first visit to Green
Mountain, she realized that emotional eating is stopping
her from maintaining weight loss and a healthy weight. Her
greatest insight was that she really doesn't get the
emotional support she needs much of the time, from herself
or others, and she turns to food without even realizing
it. She ends up eating when she's not physically hungry
because her emotions almost feel like hunger to her. Instead
of identifying what she is really feeling, she starts to
think about food and eating, thereby distracting herself.
Emotional eating ranks as one of the top reasons women who
come to Green Mountain struggle with weight loss and healthy
weights. Repeatedly eating when we're not hungry, or
eating until we're stuffed, often reflects difficulties
with low self-esteem, feelings of emptiness, perfectionism,
the desire to be special, respected and admired, a need for
control or power, and/or trouble expressing feelings.
Rather than ‘fixing the food,' which often leads
to more struggles, ‘fixing' our emotional states
offers more chance for stopping emotional eating problems.
Emotional Eating Solutions
In her book The Solution, Laurel Mellin, MA, RD,
describes a nurturing process that emphasizes the need for
awareness of our emotions, our needs and whether we need support
in helping us meet those needs. The process consists of three
questions:
- How do I feel? Do I feel lonely, bored,
sad, angry, fearful or any of the many other feelings that
can affect us? If we don't recognize what we are feeling,
we have a hard time identifying what we need.
- What do I need? This is the question
we need to answer to help us address our feeling. Do I need
company, stimulation, grieving, respect, etc.?
- Do I need support? Teri
Hirss, BS, MEd, health psychology therapist at Green
Mountain at Fox Run, encourages us to identify what feels
like support to us, and to recognize how we can better support
ourselves. Support can be simple things like playing rousing
music when we're feeling bored, or signing up for
that class we've been thinking about.
 “Sometimes
it's just recognizing whether we're supporting
ourselves in our thinking, or whether we're beating
ourselves up,” says Hirss.
Often we may find that we need others to help meet our
needs. Research shows social support to be one of the
key predictors of success in making changes that are important
for losing weight and achieving healthy weights. But the
thought of asking others to help meet our needs can be
a bit scary. Are we opening ourselves up to rejection?
Mellin states that by asking those around us for support,
we actually inspire others to love us more. “People
love us not because we are good, but because of our vulnerability,
our humanness,” she says.
For more insight on emotional eating and getting support
from family and friends, read our FitBriefing Coping
with People at Home. Our FitBriefing Stopping
Emotional Eating gives more insight into emotional eating,
specifically looking at how all-or-nothing thinking can create
problems.
|
