Emotional Eating: 3 healthy ways to satisfy your craving

Emotional eating is a problem that many people face when trying to lose weight. Eating because of your emotions and not because you are hungry is one of the fastest ways to gain back any weight that you many have lost. It is also the best way to prevent you from losing any weight. Psychologically, you are sabotaging yourself without even knowing it. Emotional eating could occur for a number of reasons. There are people who eat because they don’t think they’ll ever look the way they want to. This is not true. There are always new exercises to try and ways to become the best you. You may emotionally eat because you are bored, angry, anxious, or lonely. Realize that these are not good reasons to start eating. The following are three tips to help you weed away from emotional eating and get you on the right track to losing weight.

1. Water can do wonders. Quench your hunger with a tall glass of cold water. Water is a great, calorie free substitute to any food that you may eat. Make it a regular thing to always have water around. Carry a water bottle. Anytime you feel the need to eat, take a sip of water. It is likely to stop you from going and getting something to eat.

2. Write down your emotions. Keep a journal of how you feel every time you feel the need to eat when you’re not actually hungry. Examine why you think you eat too much. Once you understand why you eat too much, you will be able to find ways to stop the unneeded eating. You will start to find a pattern in the reasons why you start to eat. Recognize that your habits can change. Attack the problem. Find a better solution than breaking out the food and eating.

3. Find a healthy alternative. If you find it too hard to fight the craving of eating, find one healthy food, of your choice that you will go to when you feel the need to eat. Choose a food that is low in calorie and high in nutrients like a grapefruit, avocado, or celery to eat when you really need it. Portion this small snack. Have a small plastic bag prepared with a very small serving of your chosen food. This will prevent you from overeating even the healthy food.

These three tips may seem like easy tasks but may actually take some time to get used to. You have to be willing to stop emotional eating to end it. Take control of your eating and get ready to feel better about yourself with every little bit of progress that you make.

This post has been provided by Nicolas D'Alleva. Nicolas is the president and CEO of Specialty Answering Service, a company providing answering services to medical practices and businesses in the health field.