Health Tips

Overcoming Overeating

January 8, 2010
By Jesse L Moore

The stresses of everyday life challenge all of us daily. Worries about possible job loss, financial issues, relationships, and many other issues assault us every day. One of the symptoms of stress that is often overlooked but impacts most of all is weight gain. This is what happened to me, I have a job in the technology sector which, by definition, is stressful, I have never been overweight but after a few months on the job I noticed that my pants were getting tighter. No problem, I thought, I’ll just cut back for a while. But it wasn’t that easy and I just didn’t seem to be able to lose the weight and then keep it off. It didn’t seem to matter how much I dieted, or how much I exercised, the weight just seemed to always come back. Finally, a psychologist friend told me about the relationship between stress and food.

The term he used was “emotional eating”. This is an overeating disorder where you eat for reasons other than physical hunger. Instead you eat because of your emotional state. Emotional eating may be a result of a challenging workday, a family argument or being snubbed by a friend. The bottom line is that, in response to stress, emotional eaters use food and eating as an unconscious stress relief mechanism. This is why, for the emotional eater, diets and exercise programs have such limited results. While they can take the weight off initially, these methods do nothing to treat the underlying causes of overeating in the first place.

For us emotional eaters the key to overcoming overeating is to be brutally honest with ourselves on how we relate to all the stress in our lives. To finally overcome mindless eating and sugar cravings, you must first identify how you’re feeling and learn to cope with those feelings differently. If you don’t, all the weight loss tips and articles about eating smaller meals, exercising and balance won’t mean a thing. The reality is we emotional eaters don’t wait for our stomachs to signal meal time. We eat to escape from reality, combat boredom, mourn, socialize, or even celebrate something.

Once I went through this self examination, I realized that I needed something to help me learn how to successfully cope with my compulsive eating disorder. I could have gone the therapy route but that is very expensive and takes quite a while. After looking around I found a program that was both inexpensive and gave me results quite quickly. Not only did I lose weight and keep it off, I also began sleeping better and had more energy.

The first step is to admit that you need more help than diet pills and exercise can provide. Once you have admitted to yourself that your overeating is an attempt to make yourself feel better about something, you will be able to make the steps to finally control your weight long term.

Make a new start today and learn how you can apply the lifestyle behaviors offered through HeartMath’s Stopping Emotional Eating to and take control of your weight, and your life!

Read more about this and other stress relieving programs at Control Stress.net today!

Please read this if you have looked in vain for overeating help. There are very effective ways to begin overcoming binge eating that treat the whole person and not only the number of pounds. If you suspect you have a compulsive eating disorder or can’t stop sugar cravings, there is effective, inexpensive, assistance available.

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