The Connection Between Emotional & Binge Eating
Emotional Eating is the association with food and emotions. They can be
pleasant
or unpleasant. The quantity of food consumed can be small or large.
Binge eating is related with a large quantity of emotional eating-akin
to
stuffing one's face-finishing the whole bag of potato chips or the quart
of ice
cream. Binge eating is also usually connected with a non nutritious
source of
food.
However, most people do not understand that their eating is emotionally
based.
They just think that they have an eating problem. Or they have come to
accept
that they are genetically predisposed to overeating. Thus overeating is
just
some vague problem.
Of course they know the answer to the problem is to cut down on the
quantity of
food they consume. But, the only approach they know is to look in the
direction
of diets for a diet does cut down on the quantity of food.
And of course there are so many different diets-all aimed at a different
theory
to reduce hunger and make dieting palatable.
There are two basic mistakes with dieting that leads eventually to the
binge
that ends the diet. The first mistake is that dieting is associated with
a
scarcity mind set. The individual is constantly thinking about what
he/she can't
eat, must give up, or do without. This mind set contributes to anxiety
which
feeds an emotional rollercoaster for which they are unprepared.
The second mistake is that diets only focus on awareness of food. Not
that
awareness is bad, in fact awareness is good. However, awareness is only
a viable
technique for handling habitual eating-eating out of habit and never
addresses
the issue of emotional eating. And because we have so little training in
effective techniques to handle emotions, one is totally incapable of
handling
the emotional component of say “feeling bad about one's self.”
Inevitably one fighting the battle of the bulge will have occasion to
feel badly
about oneself-it's simply common nature that something will happen where
he/she will not live up to expectations and bang-there's a feeling of
rejection,
upset, remorse, disappointment… Being ill equipped to handle these most
basic of
feelings leads one to eat something-usually something sweet. This only
compounds
a self loathing feeling which leads to eating more of sweet and the pay
off with
the compound interest of a self hatred binge. Every bite is, “It tastes
so good
but I must stop.” And ends up with, “what the hell, I'll eat the whole
damn
package.”
It's a cover up of the base emotion of disappointment, rejection, upset,
remorse… and until one learns the basics of handling emotional eating,
one stays
stuck in the cycle of dieting and binging.
An effective approach to conquer emotional eating involves asking
important
questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results
you've been
promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting when the results are so
poor.
It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop 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 an assembly line worker,
you'll be a
better assembly line worker; 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.
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Resource Box:
Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E. NGH certified, a prominent figure in the personal development field. His goal is to provide all the tools one needs to successfully deal with emotional eating.
For more information about his book, The Scale Conspiracy, please visit http://www.EmotionalEatingCure.com to stop
Binging
He has several websites with self help materials:
Self Help MP3 Downloads for Personal Growth and Personal Change at http://www.DStressDoc.com
A Program for Building Self Worth at http://www.SelfEsteemCure.com
Weight Management CD program to Conquer Emotional Eating at http://www.DStressDoc.com/Weight_Management.html
Complete program to overcome Panic Disorder With Agoraphobia at http://www.PanicBusters.com
Wholesale Pendulums for self discovery at http://www.PendulumWarehouse.com
His Book, Soothing the Itch Within and the Diet to Control It, has a special Diet for dealing with Morgellons and Other Itchy Skin Parasites . For more information please go to http://www.SkinParasitesEbook.com
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