Overcoming Eating Disorders – control of emotional eating – starts with self-awareness of the problem and then self-management.
Self-awareness is the most difficult part since you have to accept the fact that you have a weakness that has led to the problem with obesity or being overweight, and that you weren’t just ‘born’ that way.
You can begin to evaluate your emotional eating habits by keeping a short 4-5 day diary. Write down each time you eat.
Concentrate on the time of day you eat, and how you are feeling each time you reach for another morsel of food, rather than what you actually eat.
If you acknowledge that there WILL be a feeling associated with your actions, you will find that identifying that emotion becomes easier each day.
Look through your diary at the end of the 5th day, and note how many times you ate because you were, or thought your were, hungry. Evaluate that number, the times of the day and other emotions that seemed to be involved in the automatic reach for food.
Be honest… you won’t help or hurt anyone but yourself. Self-management will be the next step. Like all things in life, the longer you do something the easier it gets. Practice really does make something, if not perfect, at least a little easier.
Even though you can do this part on your own, you’ll probably be much more successful if you enlist the help of a partner, or at least a calendar.
Continue to write down the times you eat, and the emotions involved at the time. As you are committed to write before you eat, and read your reasons why in each instance, you will find it easier to put that food down when it is emotionally triggered.
Eventually, the emotional eating will decrease and you’ll be surprised to feel the feelings of actual hunger again!
As debilitating as eating disorders can be, they can also be recognized as such and the healing process can begin – the process of beginning to stop binge eating, or anorexia or any other type of eating disorder you may have. You don’t have to continue to suffer with this problem. There is help available and there are things you can do yourself to help.
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