Emotions are very powerful. They influence many of our daily decisions and that is not always good, especially when it concerns eating. A large part of losing weight is learning to deal with your feelings and what triggers you to eat. Emotional eating can impact our lives and our health tremendously. Not everybody has to be hungry to be able to eat. Some people eat because they are depressed, angry, stressed and many other reasons that have nothing to do with being hungry.
In order to be successful at losing weight and regaining your health, you will need to find a new way of dealing with your emotions. The following steps are a good start at seeing yourself in a different light and learning to deal with your emotions without eating, spending money, drinking or whatever compulsive behavior you may have.
• Accept yourself for who you are. Focus on what is good about you and not your negative qualities or short comings.
• Stop trying to be perfect. This is not a perfect world, so stop trying to make it that way. It will only stress you out when you could be focusing on other things. Only correct what you are able to and accept the rest.
• Do not be accepting of mistreatment. There is no reason why you have to be tolerant of poor treatment from others. You do not have to be aggressive towards this treatment, but you don’t have to stand there and take it either.
• Find a different way to cope. Find something you like to do and do that instead of eating. This sounds much easier than it is and will take some time to accomplish. If you can change the thoughts of wanting to eat even for five or ten minutes you stand a good chance of getting past them without having to eat.
• Meet your needs. Eat only when you are hungry, sleep when you are tired, seek companionship when you need it and take time for yourself when you need it.
• Learn to trust people. Not everyone deserves it, but most people do. Your life will be more fulfilled with other people in it.
• Discover your limits. Knowing where to draw the line will give you power and help you move forward.
• Learn to listen more to your head and less to your heart. Make more decisions with reasoning rather than feelings. Do not let acceptance impair your judgment when it comes to seeing the truth.
• Build a support system. This is, people you can talk to when you feel like binge eating. This could also be a place where you feel safe and can think through your destructive thoughts. Writing down what you are feeling can also help you get past whatever is making you want to eat.
• Stop thinking about food and get on with it. This will get easier as you use the other nine steps. As you experience small victories in other areas, the compulsion to eat will begin to subside.
Applying the above concepts will help you to deal with your feelings using methods other than eating. Take things one day at a time and make small changes and you will see progress. Remember, things did not get that way overnight and it will take time for them to change.
