Learn how to deal with emotions and conflict head on to avoid overeating and weight gain. Stop living in denial and accept your feelings for what they are.
We learn at an early age that when nothing else in life is going our way, food can be our friend. The cure for uncomfortable feelings is often emotional eating, which leads to weight gain.
Babies learn quickly that just because they can't see something doesn't mean it isn't there. They drop their toy and look down, knowing it is still there somewhere. So why is it so difficult for us, as adults, to realize that just because we choose to bury our emotions with food, they are still there? Festering emotions and stress due to unresolved conflict are often the root of weight issues.
It's not uncommon to hear obese people say that they learned to cope with unpleasant feelings with food as a child. The food acts as a temporary buffer between you and your emotions. It numbs the feelings. Whether the emotions still exist or not once you've grown up, the habits of emotional eating remain. Emotional eating is a serious problem that can lead to obesity and life-threatening diseases. Eating disorders require personal reflection (and often counseling or medication) to get to the core of the problem. Dealing with emotional eating is no different.
Break Free from Denial and Emotional Eating
One way to beat the cycle of emotional eating and weight gain is to really stop and analyze your behavior. Keep a feelings journal to reflect on your feelings and bring your thoughts to the surface again. Denying yourself the experience of feeling your emotions is not healthy. Train yourself to feel the emotions, deal with emotional issues head on, know that feeling certain emotions is normal and acceptable and stop living in denial.
It may seem like an impossible task to overcome denial to lose weight, but the choice is completely yours. You choose how you react to your feelings. You also make the choice to push down those feelings and mask them by overeating. Making peace with food is essential for weight loss success. Know that you don't have to deny yourself of your favorite foods, but you do need to challenge your behavior with regard to food and decide not to let it control you any longer.
Food is only a temporary fix for emotional issues. It makes you feel good, gives you a pleasure sensation and meets an immediate need. The problem is that overeating for emotional reasons is not healthy behavior for the long term. In addition to causing health problems and obesity, eating too much to bury your feelings makes you feel worse about yourself. Your self esteem suffers as you gain weight and sabotage your own dieting efforts. Make a conscious effort to change how you react to the world around you and you will be able to cope with your food issues and lose weight.
