Ever caught yourself chomping down potato chips or eating ladles full of ice cream, even when you are not hungry? Well, the good news is that you're not alone. The bad news, though, is that it's the main reason you are not losing weight. To stop yourself from indulging in junk, we have to figure out the main culprit that's triggering it in the first place.
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Research shows that for most women this culprit is emotional distress, or in other words, emotionally overeating when feeling "bummy". It's almost as if they seek solace from food and use it to fill a hole caused by an actual problem. It is a vicious cycle where you continue to emotionally overeat which results in weight gain, all while never actually working out the actual problem.
Here are three highly effective ways of barring it from happening again.
1. Eliminate coffee and caffeinated beverages. When feeling down, your goal should be to de-stress yourself. Coffee and sodas actually do the opposite for your body. Caffeine increases your stress hormones such as catecholamines. This increases your cortisol levels, which in turn increases insulin. That triggers inflammation, which then makes you feel lousy and grumpy. It is a horrible chain reaction, resulting in you eating that piece of chocolate cake at 12 a.m.
The solution? Green tea! Green tea contains theanine which has a calming affect on your body. It helps your brain focus instead of running crazily in different directions. When you lower your stress, you will be able to make more mindful decisions.
2. Be grateful. We focus so much on what we don't have that we forget the actual blessings in our life. By reflecting on things you are grateful for during bedtime, you will promote the feelings of happiness and positivity. Each time you count your blessings, you empower yourself. You remind yourself how lucky you are and how you can continue to be so by making smart decisions. It will also increase your self-esteem and confidence level, a lack of which is often linked to emotional overeating.
3. Write down your negative thoughts. Physically writing down your negative thoughts and then dumping the paper in the garbage will make the negativity powerless. It will stop the negative thoughts from leeching out your energy and focus. By writing, you actually acknowledge that thought and then make a conscious decision of not letting it affect you from that moment on. Once it's on that paper, it is out of your mind, and once it's in the trash, it's out of your house. This incredibly simple trick can make you feel less worried and much more positive and happy in a matter of minutes.
To stop that attack of emotional overeating, you need to physically remove yourself from being in such an emotionally vulnerable state. You need to stop falsely believing that food has the power to fix your problem. It doesn't. You do! By actually tackling what the problem is or by shifting your focus from the negatives to the positives, you will realign your body back to a state of efficiency.
This post was originally published on May 15, 2014.
Image via iStock
