Week 13 Weigh-in: Emotional Eating

I love cooking. 

I love learning new cooking tips.

I love trying new recipes.

I think it could be responsible for my tendency to overeat. I love the food I cook or let me just say I love eating food, good foods, delicious food. Can I say I lack self control? Or all these episodes of overeating even after intermittent fasting is emotional in nature?

I have tried 5-6 meals a day and I ended up overweight and now I am doing intermittent fasting still I tend to overeat at my non-fasting window or days.

The question I am asking myself today is this: AM I AN EMOTIONAL EATER?

Whenever you eat outside hunger it can be defined as emotional eating. Anytime you eat to soothe yourself or suppress a negative emotion e.g. anger, sadness, or even boredom you are emotionally eating. 

I am aware of this but I seem not to be able to help myself when the eating starts but I try that it doesn't spin out of control, at least I am sure to get it curbed within 24 hours, though the deed is done already. 

I can factually say that I overeat out of anxiety, I try to use food to divert my attention from whatever issue I am anxious about (even when there is nothing to eat, I bite my nails deep, ugh!)

I am writing this post because I am still struggling with my Wednesday weigh ins. I weighed in at 172lbs this morning, that is a 2 pound increase from last week. I did well through the week until yesterday,  I was feeling really dull (no good sleep) and the next thing I thought of was food and more food. I felt bloated too because of some salty snacks I had yesterday. 

Some ways out of emotional eating according to WebMD.com

1. Pay attention to your thoughts before you eat.

2. Seek Solutions: Make a list of what the problems are and if you can solve them, get into action but if they are out of control, they you should choose not to react as you have always done in the past. Talk to someone about it

3. Pause: It is advisable to give a gap between the urge to eat and actually eating. You could pause a bit to know why you want to eat, if it is not as a result of hunger then you should delay a bit or do something to distract you from the food like taking a glass of water. You might be surprised that being fully aware of why you want that food may take your mind completely away from it.

4. Try Moving: 10 Pushups, 10 minutes walk or some short exercise could push the thought of food aside till it's time for the planned meal or snack.

5. Keep it Real: It could be normal to emotionally eat sometimes especially when you are in the blues but not curbing it is where it becomes a problem. You should not allow the episodes to become frequent.

Weighing your options can help too. 

• How you feel after each episode of emotional eating can also help to put you in check when the urge is sparked again.
• What do you gain by emotionally eating? Obese, guilt, bad health etc
• Does the problem go away? No, it won't go away by using food.
• Is the negative emotion subsided? Yes, but temporarily. It normally comes back greater if the issue is not addressed properly.

I will be on the look out this week and I hope the best numbers on the scale is achieved.