2 Great Tools to Help Control Emotional Eating

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2 Great Tools to Help Control Emotional Eating


FRIDAY, MAY 03, 2013 | POSTED BY DR. GOULD



How you choose to view the journey of gaining control over emotional eating will play a large part in just how far you succeed. An outlook that views it as tedious and difficult will tire far more quickly than one that sees it as a journey of self-discovery; a journey who's insights and self-awareness can enrich and improve life in so many areas.

In keeping with this view, it might serve you well to keep an eating journal. A simple book to record how you felt before, during and after an emotional eating episode—which, over time, will map out a clear document of your emotional eating triggers and your responses to them.

An eating journal can also mark your progress—which can be very powerful as emotional eaters tend to highlight their shortcomings rather than their achievements.

And a great companion tool to an eating journal is the Emotional Eating Hunger Scale (EEHS).

The EEHS will help you gauge your level of emotional hunger each time you overeat and, combined with the eating journal, will enable you to see what and how much you eat when you're too hungry versus the times you eat when hunger is just beginning.

The Emotional Eating Hunger Scale

1. I'm so hungry I feel dizzy and irritable.
2. I'm so hungry I'm having trouble concentrating.
3. I feel physical signs of hunger (stomach rumbling).
4. I'm starting to feel like eating.
5. I feel just right—perfectly comfortable.
6. I feel comfortably full.
7. I feel a little too full.
8. I feel stuffed.
9. I feel very full and might need to unbutton my pants or loosen my belt.
10. I feel intensely uncomfortable.

Once you have a clearer picture and understanding of your eating habits, you can start making changes to things like when you eat, so as to better accommodate your true physical hunger.

You can also make some other key changes such as:

. Eating proteins with each meal as they act as appetite suppressants and help control hunger pains.
. Eating smaller meals more frequently to reduce the frequency and intensity of hunger pains.
. Eating high-fiber foods first to fill your stomach and reach comfortable fullness sooner.

Getting Focus

You can also hone in on say, one or two particular behaviors that you'd like to change, and then use your eating journal to observe yourself in action. e.g. If you overeat late at night, or when no one is home, write down how you were feeling before you broke out the food, how you felt while you were eating, and how you felt after you'd finished.

Seeing your answers in black and white can be very enlightening as stopping to consider your feelings is not something you'd normally do when you're confronted with difficult emotions—you'd be too busy turning to food to shut them down.

A Healthy Habit

The more you use your eating journal, the more natural it will come to you, and you'll find yourself building a powerful document of your emotional eating journey, one that you can reflect on, learn from and draw encouragement and reward from.

Keeping an eating journal is not essential (there'll be some of you who cannot find the time or simply aren't inclined) but it's a wonderful option to help make your emotional eating journey one of insight and self-discovery rather than a difficult and tedious homework list.

Your Turn

Can you see your emotional eating journey as one of self-discovery rather than drudgery? Does the idea of starting an eating journal seem like something that could not only work for you, but be something you'd like to look back on one day? Let us know in the comments.

larryc0923

Interesting idea but instead of a scale like is shown here it seems to me that instead we should track how a person is feeling such as happy, sad, bored, depressed, etc and in this way see how emotions drive calories. Thank you for such a thought provoking post.