Emotional Eating Over the Holidays
Maintaining our healthy lifestyle during the Holiday season may take extra effort but it is worth it in the big picture of our overall health. One holiday struggle is emotional eating.I like to divide the reasons we eat into three categories: Physical hunger, Social expectations, and emotional reasons.
Physiological hunger always has a physical manifestation. Some signs of hunger include hunger pangs, stomach growling, headache, feeling weak, grumpy, etc. Physical hunger does not go away unless you eat. It can be delayed, ignored and denied but it is still there.
The social expectation is another reason we eat. Social eating is the eating that is expected in social situations such as work, parties, celebrations, gatherings. There can be a great deal of extra social pressure to eat this time of year. Social eating is, in fact, eating as a result of peer pressure.
The last category is emotional eating. Emotional eating is the most difficult to manage and the most challenging to give a framework. Emotional eating is eating that does not come from physical hunger or social expectations.
I talk about emotional eating a lot in my work with clients on creating a healthy lifestyle. I believe it is a topic that we don’t address in our diet culture of skinny now and instant gratification. Most of our decisions are tied to our emotions. Marketers know that and prey on our emotions when they package, market and design our food culture.
Addressing emotional eating means looking at the emotions tied to why I want to eat. What am I really hungry for? Why do I really want chocolate? If, I really just want chocolate, then let’s go get a really good piece of chocolate. Sit down without distractions. Eat a little chocolate and maybe share some with someone you enjoy. Make it an experience and don’t buy a lot. Then call it done and walk away.
If I can’t do that then it might not just be chocolate that I am craving. Maybe it’s intimacy, maybe it’s a true connection, maybe it’s relaxation. If I am craving these things and I have never connected with those emotions all I know is that food is soothing and that soothed feeling is what I am seeking, not the actual food.
In her book ”Eat What you Love, Love What you Eat”, Michelle May, M.D says “When a craving doesn’t come from hunger, eating will never satisfy it”.So if I start eating when I am not physically hungry, how do I know when to stop? When I am sick and stuffed? How often have you found yourself there?
Here are a few tips I have found helpful with emotional eating.
Pray and seek God as you grow in the management of your temple and health.
Beloved friend, I pray that you are prospering in every way[d] and that you continually enjoy good health, just as your soul is prospering. 3 John 1:2 God wants to restore us to health. Ask Him for help and guidance.
Determine your triggers.
Some of us have times of day that trigger emotional eating. My clients often struggle with 2 pm-4 pm in the day and 7 pm-9 pm. Once you have identified your trigger times you can build a strategy to help with that time.
Be accountable for what you are eating.
Journaling and tracking your food is absolutely a game-changer. My clients almost always resist it but the reason they resist only magnifies the need to do it. Tracking what you eat, how you move and how you feel in response to the combination is information that can be tremendously valuable.
You need to be the lead detective in your health investigation. Gather the facts!Eating is a part of building and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. The holidays do bring an extra challenge but we are Overcomers! When we are mindful of the reasons we eat we can enjoy the holidays in connection with our goals for balance.
