You’ve most likely heard of the idea of emotional eating, however you might not be certain if you’re an emotional eater.
The fundamental idea is straightforward.
Eating emits both serotonin as well as dopamine within our brains (these two chemicals within our brains lower feelings of depression and increase positive emotions).
Here is the trick for defeating emotional eating and testing yourself to find out if you have it. Create a narrow list of very healthy foods that you’ll permit yourself to eat for 10 days. When I say narrow, I mean you’ve got a maximum of 2 meals to pick from for each one of the 3 primary meals of the day.
They must be really healthy foods together with low-calorie density, such as simple, old fashioned oatmeal using a handful of smashed walnuts and several frozen berries combined in (no sugar or fatty milk).
You’ll be able to eat as much of the foods as you would like throughout the day. Drink just water or zero carb beverages. Soon after 3 days, you will discover that the foods aren’t really appetizing.
You will develop the impulse to go eat something before you remember that you only have the narrow list of options and a thought will appear in your mind that will go something similar to this: “Oh, I’m not that hungry.”
If this sort of thought sequence jumps into your head over two times per day, you are eating for “feel good” reasons rather than to satisfy genuine hunger.
The simple truth is, when you’re really hungry because of a significant calorie deficit, foods begin to taste really good, including the boring ones like a simple piece of stone-ground whole wheat bread.
Ever tried a fast a couple of days and then tasted bread? It’s incredible just how tasty it becomes.
You may be eating as a result of boredom, unhappiness, low self-esteem, or some other emotion-based reason if you find yourself visiting the fridge over and over and then deciding not to eat items on the “allowed” list. If you wish to take this idea and broaden it into a life-style, just put additional “allowed meals” until you achieve a healthy level of well balanced nutritional variety to enable you to get all the vitamins, minerals, healthy proteins, carbohydrates, and good fats you’ll want to thrive long term.
Keep in mind that most of the world’s population survives on an extremely narrow group of staple foods available to them. Perhaps the cause of the epidemic of weight problems in America is the accessibility to a never-ending variety of foods.
We now have a behavioral instinct to consume a variety (most likely to obtain a variety of nutritional vitamins and such), but in our modern day era we now have an endless variety of foods. This generates a virtual play ground for our taste buds which could become very addicting.
Live a better life. Live in the body you would like to live in by simply taking advantage of modern advancements rather than becoming a victim of modern advancements.
-Dr. Todd Snyder
