Welcome to my first blog. This has been a long time coming and I'm happy to put this together.
Healthy Weight Dancing Feet is all about health, nutrition, healthy weight and achieving optimum health and weight. We will offer you information, statistics, healthy recipes, and much more to help you attain optimum health.
Remember you are the creator of your own destiny and therefore if better health is truly what you desire, you WILL attain it.
The topic of my blog today is(are) the struggle(s) most of us face with health and a healthy weight, and how we can overcome these struggle(s).
Is the number one reason REALLY that you don’t have time to exercise? Let’s be honest with ourselves, this is usually just an excuse. If healthy weight is what we want we will schedule activity into our day and make it happen.
It does not need to be at a Gym in an organized manner. Make it work for you. Walk or bike to work if you are close enough. Power walk for 30 minutes during your lunch hour. Go out dancing once a week. Do something you enjoy and make it fit into your schedule.
The next five weeks we will be covering five questions you need to ask yourselves: Why, When, What, Where and How do you eat? Once you have an understanding of this you are well on your way to your goal healthy weight!
Firstly, why?
Do you eat because you are hungry?
Or because you are upset or stressed?
If you eat because you are hungry, great! If you are eating to deal with stressful situations, you are an emotional eater and you have other concerns that need to be addressed over and above a sensible diet and exercise.
The reasons for emotional eating can be deep rooted for some of us, ranging from something as serious as child abuse to using food as a coping mechanism for dealing with uncomfortable emotions. When we are stressed, depressed, angry or sometimes just bored, we use food to numb our senses and give comfort.
However, as is alcohol with alcoholics, the truth is this is a short-term solution which often intensifies the emotion. For example, your employer read your the riot act in front of your colleagues and you decide to eat an entire bag of chips to make you feel better and you do, temporarily. But once you realize what you’ve done, you now feel even more depressed and guilty about the calories you’ve consumed and ultimately the fat you are likely to gain.
The key to controlling emotional eating is to identify what it is you really need.
Ask yourself these questions:
What specific emotion am I experiencing?
Will food really help?
What do I really need?
What can I do differently at the moment?
The following strategies may also help increase your awareness of your emotional eating:
Allow yourself to feel the emotion instead of drowning it with food.
Journal your thoughts and feelings.
Ask for a hug, some quiet time, or a break.
Stop and take a few deep breaths (meditate)
Go out for a walk/exercise.
Wait a full minute before taking a bite of food.
Get up and walk into another room to distance yourself from the cause of your stress.
Some additional steps which may be taken to alter emotional eating patterns include:
1) Determine if emotional eating is truly an issue for you. Keep an emotion/thought journal to keep track of the day, time, and emotions that you are feeling and what you really need.
2) Positive self-talk is very powerful, even if you don’t initially believe the statements you are saying to yourself, eventually you will. "I am in control of my food intake, my emotions do not control my food intake."
3) Stay in touch with supportive friends and family and stay away from the nay sayers. Isolation and emotional eating go hand in hand. Food can easily become your best friend, your support, and your comfort so you need to nip that in the bud!
4) Stay active, even if you don't feel like it. Physical activity helps decrease feelings of anxiety, depression, and irritability. Believe it or not, exercise can replace food as your source of enjoyment, maybe not as you are doing it but once you are done, you will feel great!
If the causes of your emotional eating are not too deep rooted, these recommendations can often help. But for some counselling may be necessary. There are professionals who specialize in severe cases of emotional eating, and in such cases, I’d suggest such a professional be consulted.
Lastly I’d like to leave with with a quote:
"Those with goals tend to succeed because they are focused and know where they are going, while those without goals do not."
Ted Karam
Author, from his new book Jumping On Water: Awaken Your Joy - Empower Your Life
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