Something I'm sure many us struggle with, is emotional eating. I would like to share some knowledge that I have learnt on my journey and hope there is something in this story that aids everyone on their journey towards weight loss.
This explanation will be simplified so I apologise if the finer details not as correct as they could be.
Emotional eating is a learned behaviour, and if something can be learned, it can definitely be unlearned or more scientifically known as deconditioning.
With learned behaviour, there is a trigger or stimulus that causes the learned behaviour to occur and reward that reinforces the learned behaviour.
For most people this is understood as stress causes emotional eating which results in the lack of stress. As we may all be aware of, emotional eating doesn't really accomplish what we intend it to do. We are temporarily relieved of stress, but often are even more stressed out in the long term.
The first step in solving this problem is to be aware of the fact that we are emotionally eating in the first place. That we turn to eating as a method of destressing. I was personally stuck on this first step for a very long time. I knew that I was emotionally eating, but feel as if I didn't have the power or will to stop it.
The second step, is understanding what causes us to emotionally eat and why we think it solves our problems. This step has a lot of variation between each individual and it's up to themselves to determine why. For example, our parents may have been the ones who have resorted to emotional eating and we learnt our behaviours from them. Our parents may have rewarded us with food when we are sad. Personally, dinnertimes were always peaceful for me as a child, and it was the one time my family wouldn't be fighting with each other. And over time I learnt to associate eating with destressing.
The third step, is to be aware of the true reality. Eating food is a response to the body being hungry. if you think about it logically, it doesn't make sense for food to relieve stress. Eating delicious foods releases endorphins which make us feel better temporarily. However, flooding our body with endorphins does nothing to relieve stress in the long term. Somewhere along the lines we have unconsciously learnt to associate food with destressing or solving our problems.
The fourth and final step is learning to actively deassociate our learned behaviours and associate new ones. When I felt stressed, and was on the verge on emotional eating. I had to consciously think about what would actually destress me in this situation. For me destressing, meant communicating what was bothering me to my friends and family and not keeping my emotions bottled up. Overtime, I have learnt to not turn to food at the first sign of stress, but turn to communicating effectively with both my partner and friends about my problems.
For everybody the final stage is different and I hope what I've learnt along the way has been helpful to at least one person.
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