Almost everyone, at least once in a while, turns to food for some reason other than being hungry. Recognizing what spurs you to eat when your body doesn’t need nourishment can mean the difference between bafflement when the scale won’t bulge and finally losing weight. Take a hard look at yourself and your eating habits to see if one of these reasons is why you’ve packed on pounds.
1) Your emotions are in an uproar.
Instead of coping with uncomfortable feelings of anger, sadness, stress, boredom or loneliness, many of us turn to food. “Mood eating” accounts for 75 percent of overeating and diet failure, according to the Cleveland Clinic and its nutrition program studies. When we use food to comfort ourselves to our own detriment, it’s time to work on the emotional side of overeating, says Lisa Dorfman, a licensed psychotherapist, sports nutritionist and adjunct professor at the University of Miami.
What you can do: “Simply being aware of which emotions trigger overeating can help you stop it,” she says. Try keeping a food journal to see which moods accompany you to the pantry. Once you see a pattern of using sweets to soothe stress or nostalgic foods like Aunt Barb’s noodle casserole to remind you of your far-away family, you give yourself the opportunity to respond to those feelings with something other than food. Turn to something you enjoy that keeps you busy – and away from the kitchen. Try playing fetch with your dog, knitting or calling a friend. By finding a positive outlet for your negative emotions, you’ll not only avoid weight-loss setbacks, but you’ll also accomplish something.
2) Your bad habits run your life.
You open the refrigerator door every time you enter the kitchen. You snack throughout the day and almost never sit down to eat real meals. You finish every morsel on your plate. You grab a bag of chips when your favorite TV show comes on. When it comes to food, bad behaviors can be life-threatening at their worst and wardrobe-wrecking at their least.
To learn to overcome overeating is to learn to accept yourself as you are, and to come to realise that no food is bad/good, and to learn how to take your emotions out of your eating, to learn to eat when your stomach is hungry, not your mouth or hands wanting something. Its not easy. Also your message of dieting, get off the incorrect information which is what most heath professions will give you. Its OK to be happy and binge free, accepting yourself as you are, and feeling great. No guilt.
The bottom line:
A good yoga instructor can work with you despite not being able to do it all. Sometimes you will be pleasantly rewarded to find out that you can do a lot of things physically. Practice,practice and the strength and flexibility will come. I may not be a great yoga person but it is really helping my strength and flexibility. The added bennies are the decreased level of stress and increased relaxation I get from the yoga breathing. As I start to have more confidence in my physical being, I have started to look for additional physical activities-next week we are going to rent bikes along the River Walk and go for a ride(it might not be a two wheeler but a trike may do just fine. So think about yoga.
nice concise list...very helpful. i get "distracted" and there goes my healthy eating. i try to keep healthy snacks on hand, but......
thanks again
I was diagnosed with arthritis back in 1975 and have been dealing with that all my life. I have put on weight, taken the weight off and put it back on. I just don't know where to turn to ( I don't want to go on diet pills to control this weight gain but I might have to).
Losing the weight and increasing the activity has made a huge difference in my arthritis. I used to count he minutes until I could take my next dose of anti inflammatories, now I frequently skip a dose or go entire days without needing them.
I have another 10# to get to where I would like to be and find that I need to think of my exercise as a drug. Skipping it is like "not taking my medicine",and why would you want to do that?
. Its like I go from one good week to a bad weekend to a bad week altogether. I am 5'6 and weight 183. I keep going up. Any advise?
I am 59yrs old and was being nostalgic. I was shocked to see that almost ALL of the young folks in the film were trim. There were NO fat kids at Woodstock. Could this possibly be true? Today soooo many young folks are overweight. I was shocked to see that it was not the case forty years ago. Then I went to the airport to catch a plane and observed the same age group....It was unbelievable. At Woodstock there were lots of young men who were in good shape, but NONE of the pumped up Beefy types that we see today. I also observed that at the airport there were dozens of pumped up guys who were not trim... they look like retired wrestlers. Just Big!!! Too big. Is this because these young men just eat too much and perhaps take steroids (at some point) and try to bulk up? I used to envy guys with big arms and chests.. but now I think they are just disguising the same problem as their Fatter brethren. We are eating JUNK... carbs in everything and sugar in everything. I am trying to loose weight because I too have developed type II diabetes.
At 6'2' and 220lbs I don't look too bad, but I know that if I lost the fat I would be a natural 185lbs. That is my real body type. That is what I should look like... the Woodstock body type... not the New "Beefy is Macho" look.... Think about it....now that Every other guy is beefy, men tend to think they are old football players vs old fat guys. My eyes are opened .... I don't want to be an old fat guy... I want to be a trim
old hippie.... LOL.
Also ... I think there is another deception going on ....at the airport I observed that if a lot of beefy guys put a tatoo around the biceps... and pretend that it is muscle.... check it out .... soooo many tatoos on chubby arms... looks macho... but is it really muscle? If you have not seen the movie Wally.... rent it.
I have been going to Weight Watchers for several months and have lost 30 pounds. Every WW rule is included in these articles about weight loss. So why do I still go? It's because I need to be accountable for what I eat and what I lose or gain. I found out that I couldn't do it myself. I have RA and had ballooned to over 200 pounds. At just 5'0" it's about 75 pounds too much. I didn't think I could exercise with my RA, but I have proved to myself that I can. I walk on my treadmill 6 days a week at a speed of 3.5mph. I want to gradually work up to 3 miles. I'm at 2.25 miles at a time. I feel so much better because I got off the couch and did something about my weight. Nobody can do it for you--you have to do it for yourself. And you can. I just know you can. Because I didn't think I could do it and I did. Good luck.
I lost fifty pounds and I feel wonderful. I was with some people today and I love hearing how wonderful I look. I feel great. My knees do not hurt me anymore, I have more energy.
I do not thing Weight Watchers, or Jenny Craig or any of them work.
I did go somewhere though. It is a one on one, HIGH PROTEIN - LOW CARB. eating plan based on the glycemic index. My blood pressure and cholesterol are wonderful, whereas I was borderline high blood pressure when I started. I write down everything I eat and my councilor goes over it with a fine tooth comb and make notes. Then she weighs me and then we sit and talk about everything under the sun for at least an hour. She is great and I consider her a friend now. I love the way I eat and I hope to do it for the rest of my life. If I could do it, so can you. It does become a way of life and it is so worth it. I am sixty four and I feel thirty four. I have many trick and there are a lot of online places to order high protein bars, the ones in the stores are full of carbs. Lindora.com is one of my favorites and she has 20% off sales or free shipping sales and I wait for that and then I stock up on my bars and puddings. It does take the edge off and therefore when your willpower fails you can turn to these which are just as sweet as anything else you would get into.
I wish I could help each and every one of you.
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