Are You an Emotional Eater?

Emotional eating is the practice of consuming large quantities of food — usually "comfort" or junk foods — in response to feelings instead of hunger. Experts estimate that 75% of overeating is caused by emotions.

Are you an emotional eater?

• Cravings a specific food and have to have it right away and will even go out of your way to get it.
• Eating after an emotional or stressful event and are not necessarily hungry.
• When feeling stressed your first response is to "stuff" that feeling with food.
• Eating unconsciously where you may intend to only eat a little of something and suddenly you find you’ve eaten the whole thing.
• Constantly thinking about food even when you are not hungry to compensate for the emotions you are feeling.
• Rationalizing, minimizing, projecting blame and using other defense mechanisms to justify your emotional eating.
• You don’t stop eating even when you are full and eat to the point of being stuffed.
• After you have eaten past your hunger point you then regret it and feel guilty for eating that much.

If you identify with any of the above, you may be emotional eater.

Imagine having the power and control to stop emotional eating anytime, anywhere, anyplace. Through hypnosis people have discovered that they can gain that power and control over food just like turning off a switch.

I would like to share two of those techniques with you today: The benefits of keeping a Food Journal & The Hunger Scale.

Let's go old school for a moment. First you will need a small notepad, a pen or pencil and a red and green highlighter. Keep a daily journal of the foods you eat to notepad. (I recommend this method because there is something that happens psychologically when we put a pen to paper. The hands are the most direct link to the subconscious mind and this technique will bolster the effectiveness than by using other methods.)

As you go through your day enter on notepad everything — and I mean everything that you eat. At the end of the day take out the highlighters and green highlight the foods you determined for physical/nutritional needs and highlight in red the foods that you determined were for emotional/psychological needs. Do this fearlessly and honestly for one week. Many people that have used this technique have discovered that when reviewing their food journal — even after one week there is significantly less red highlighted foods as opposed to green highlighted foods.

The second technique is to utilize The Hunger Scale. Before eating anything simply apply the following and then make a determination on whether or not something you want to eat. I guess this will start working on a subconscious level making a determination between eating for physical/nutritional needs as opposed to eating for emotional/psychological needs.

 The Hunger Scale

5 -7 = Stuffed to the point of feeling sick Very uncomfortably full, uncomfortably full, feel stuffed Very full, feel as if you have overeaten

Even small changes carried out over long period of time can make a significant difference. Remember it is progress not perfection. I welcome your questions and comments and wish you success in your future endeavors.

And please consider joining us for a Hypnosis workshop at at , The Riverhead Hilton Garden Inn and the Islandia Marriott

Call 631-288-4794 for more information and please visit the website at http://beachhypnotist.com for our forthcoming calendar of events