Emotional Eating To Feed Your Feelings

Emotional eating feeds your feelings. If you munch when you feel upset, down, bored, excited, happy, confused, malaise, uncertain, joyful, bored..., then you are feeding your feelings.

Is it possible for you to think of each of these emotions as a different persona? Sound strange?

Yes, there's Ms. Upset, Mrs. Confusion, Mr. Boredom, Master Joy and they are all searching for a companion to have fun. And they find tons of individuals with whom to play their games.

No wonder that the latest obesity statistics are:
* 58 Million Overweight; 40 Million Obese; 3 Million morbidly Obese
* Eight out of 10 over 25 are overweight
* 78% of American's not meeting basic activity level recommendations
* 25% completely Sedentary
* 76% increase in Type II diabetes in adults 30-40 yrs old since 1990
The reality is that these emotions are having a great time and what does the trapped emotional eater do? Answer: Binge on carbs.

What good does it do to talk about yoga, advice to feel good about you, relationship advice, deep breathing, meditation, priorities, diets, healthy eating habits... when it's the feelings themselves that are the culprit?

The quandary is that advice is not the answer even to dealing with the feeling of emotion. I can imagine someone saying, "Take a deep breadth when you're bored, frustrated, or angry." Not that it might not help, but it will help no more than all the other advice.

No, the answer lies with our own beliefs about these emotions. That is, why they should be avoided or not felt, or we don't deserve them or why they don't help.

The more obese one is the more incapacitated he/she is to feeling certain emotions or feelings. In fact in many respects we are emotional cripples--crippled at some age in our growing up. This happens with any emotion and at any age.

Psychologists may define this as post traumatic stress disorder depending on how incapacitated one is.

This would generally apply to the severely obese--70 or more pounds overweight|Generally those who are 70 or more pounds overweight are emotional incapacitated in one or more areas]. Yet, once identified, it's really no big deal. It's that the subconscious mind has been frozen at a particular age in regard to its ability to feel certain emotions. The object is to bring the subconscious mind through education. Hypnosis is a very powerful tool to accomplish this.

Yet, while one may not be physically incapacitated with 70 or more extra pounds, one could be mentally frozen with 15 or 20 pounds that never go away. The task is the same--become boring for Mr. Emotion.

A realistic approach to managing weight involves asking important questions "What is missing? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised from the experts and resources you've consulted?" Using the same recycled fad diet advice is clearly insane. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to handle emotional eating--eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're a hair dresser, a better hair dresser; a mother, a better mother... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible.