subject: Emotional Eating--the Stress Of Emotions [print this page] Why do 95% of all over eaters gain weight back after they've lost it? Answer: emotional eating.
Everyday I read articles or books featuring a means of overcoming emotional eating. At first I was excited about what new tips I'd learn and was quickly disappointed.
To to Amazon.com and you'll find the three top books about emotional eating:
Taming of the Chew by Denise Lamothe, Phy.D, H.H.D
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth
Shrink Yourself (Break free from emotional eating forever!) by Roger Gould, MD.
It's amazing that not one of these books dealing with emotional eating has even one chapter on how to handle emotions. Nothing about the cause of emotions? Embracing emotions or the importance of experiencing them is totally ignored.
Tons of articles are dug up by google alert that deal with emotional eating and all they provide is old recycled advice (much as the books I mentioned) from the fad diet era.
None of the articles or books recognize that emotional eaters don't eat because of particular emotions, but because of the stress the emotions place upon the over eater.
That's right, emotions themselves are stressful and the well recognized stress management techniques, i.e. call a friend, take a deep breadth, count to ten, do yoga, and so on just are not effective for 95% of over eaters. Yes, it's all good advice, but very few over eaters actually take the time to put it into practice. And none of this advice deals directly with the stress of the emotions.
For instance, do you like to feel confused? angry? uncertain? malaise? upset? bored? down?
How about love? joy? happiness?
Most people say "NO" to the first group of emotions and call them negative and they say "YES" to the second group of emotions and call them positive.
But do you know what you've just done?
You've just voted. You determined that there are some emotions you dislike and some that you like.
Actually emotions are nothing more than different energy levels and it's our opinions about them that make them good or bad. Yes it's what we believe about them that makes them stressful.
Yes this is the stress that makes us emotional over eaters and contributes to eating excessively.
Even happiness for instance can be stressful. "Don't be too happy, you'll set yourself up for a big let down."
It's beliefs of this nature--and we have them for every emotion--that stand in the way of us truly feeling happy and the result is that we dilute the emotion with food.
An effective approach to losing weight involves asking questions "What is missing here? Why are people not getting the results from the experts they consult and books that they read? It is clearly ridiculous to keep using the same techniques when the results are so poor. It's more important to learn to experience emotions and conquer emotional eating than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person. If you're a mother, you'll be a better mother--an accountant, a better accountant. Stop emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life and is how you really lose weight or make weight loss easy.
by: Richard Kuhns
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