Emotional Eating and Food Addictions

 

Your Body is More Than Your Face

 

How many times have you looked in the mirror only to see your face rather than your entire body? Some of us may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by the thought of looking in a full-length mirror. It’s important to understand that a look in the mirror should give us a realistic picture of ourselves, not a means to criticise ourselves. 

I am in constant contact with people who struggle with their weight. I have found that most people are either ignorant about healthy food choices or are reluctant to make changes in their eating habits. So instead, they fall for the tempting illusion of over-hyped exercise machines, weight loss pills, some fad diet or some expensive weight loss package… and actually end up gaining even more weight. I am yet to come across an individual who is an emotional eater and is in perfect health. Emotional eating is bound to lead to health issues sooner or later.

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Finding Happiness

Do you find food to be your only source of happiness? You are not alone; millions of people around the world suffer from compulsive eating disorder. It is a psychological condition that binds us to food. Food needs to resume its true function- being used for fuel and subtle pleasure. It was not meant to become a source of happiness. Doesn't it seem a bit odd that food should make us happy?

 

Remember that food which was once a necessity has become a luxury, that gives pleasure in life, and later makes us feel miserable. After all, we eat food to sustain ourselves. Food should be appreciated and valued. The concept of linking food with our emotions has been deliberately promoted by giant food corporations. 

There are numerous ways to find happiness instead of getting it from food. In fact, you should look towards finding happiness in the real things in life, and not be held prisoner by food any longer!

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Why You Are Not Losing Weight

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Hormone imbalances have the greatest effect on our health. They can lead to a chronic condition in the form of a specific disease and/or may adversely affect weight  - not to mention our mood and happiness. The obesity rate has tripled in the past ten years, and it is definitely not because of a lack of willpower. It’s because your hormones have been hijacked by enzyme deficient cooked and processed foods. Big food companies know how to manipulate processed foods so that they are tasty, so that you become addicted to these harmful food-like substances.

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After digging into the research, I learned that 99 percent of weight loss resistance is hormonal. Almost anyone who struggles with weight also battles a hormone imbalance. Insulin and Cortisol cause belly fat deposits. Blocked leptin results in false sense of hunger. Thyroid makes us feel low. The list is endless. So the solution is to fix hormones

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When your hormones are in balance, neither too high nor too low, you look and feel your best. But when they are imbalanced, you feel miserable, with a range of symptoms that include fatigue, sugar cravings, weight loss resistance, bloating, belly fat, trouble sleeping, anxiety or irritability, and constant stress. Hormones dictate what your body does with food. Address your hormones first, particularly insulin and cortisol, then match the right nutrient-dense food and the right quantity to your constitution. Women are much more vulnerable to hormonal imbalance than men.

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Most diets don’t work, because they fail to address the hormonal root causes that are the most common reasons for weight loss resistance. If you are tired of being fed misinformation when it comes to eating better, and want to take your health to a level you didn’t know existed, then you must address both the physical and emotional aspects that cause hormonal imbalance.

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Physical Aspects of Weight Loss

If you are serious about losing weight, change the way you eat, drink and think about food. Inculcate good eating habits. Remove processed foods, refined carbohydrates, sugars and sugar substitutes from your diet. Eliminate all animal protein and dairy. Your diet should mainly consist of raw whole food plant-based foods. Include nuts and seeds, apple cider vinegar, honey, ginger, garlic and turmeric. Aim for healthy nutritious hormone balancing diet and weight loss will be automatic.

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A diet that will let you eat everything you crave and lose weight doesn’t exist. If you want to lose weight you will need to eat nutritious foods and exercise. If you really want to eat healthier then you have no business being around foods that don’t fit into that lifestyle. It’s just that simple. Remember, it’s not overeating that makes you fat, it’s the quality of foods you eat that make you fat. Forget calorie counting, and begin to focus instead on the quality of your diet.

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Excercise

Make sure to keep moving, and choose forms of movement that you love, but exercise smart. My advice is to stop exercising so hard in an obsessive desire to burn calories. Instead, practice stretching exercise, walking,  yoga, meditation, several times a week. While exercise is an essential part of balancing your hormones, some exercises place a lot of stress on the body and can throw it further out of balance if not managed properly. 

Can Emotional Factors Affect Hormone levels?

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Yes, absolutely. We tend to always give priority to the physical aspects of weight loss resistance, like diet and exercise, yet the emotional, mental, social, and spiritual factors may be even more important. I believe hormones affect all of these domains. Ancient systems like Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine get it right in considering these factors in aggregate in their general concept of wellness.

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I have seen that about 80 percent of my patients have mental and emotional obstacles, beliefs, and attitudes that sabotage their weight loss. Emotional ups and downs, thoughts and feelings, derail you from eating the best fuel possible and making other wise choices. Being reactive, or triggered emotionally like a cornered animal, feels bad and sidelines your ability to tap into more advanced emotional resources. Troublesome emotions can lead to drinking too much alcohol, binge-watching TV, overeating, and may compel you to use shopping as a balm.

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Even worse, the rigid approach of restricted eating and harsh exercise can escalate hormonal and emotional problems. A daily battle with the bathroom scale can cause shame, judgment, suffering, and obsession with weight—contributing further to weight loss resistance. When meals are accompanied by guilt, anger, suffering, or anxiety, a physiologic stress response is activated, triggering a fight-or-flight reaction and raising cortisol.

The best way to get your hormones back on track and reinstate a healthy weight is to correct hormonal misfires with changes to the way you eat, move, think, and supplement.

Losing weight is not a contest. 

 

Everyone loses weight at a different pace. Even though it is natural to feel jealous when someone else loses weight faster than you, you don’t have to let these feelings sabotage your efforts. For many of us, someone else’s success becomes an excuse to reach for food. We tell ourselves that we will never be as good as he or she is so why even bother? By doing this, you are giving yourself a reason to use food as a means of soothing your emotions. You have put yourself in the victim mode. You tell yourself that you aren’t good enough so you may as well give up. Convenient and easy, isn’t it?

 

Mant times we tell ourselves the fat lies that we don’t want to hurt someone by refusing to eat the food they have prepared. We may even let ourselves believe that we will lose friends and family members if we don’t indulge. The truth here is that eating something you feel obligated to is an indication of your need to please people and a way of further increasing your denial. The two of these work together to give you a rock solid reason to continue eating.

 

The thinking goes like this: If I say no to her she won’t like it so I have to eat it. You convince yourself that your friendship is based solely on pleasing your friend.

 

Be Selfish

 

The single most important thing you will need to do as you start making the necessary changes is to put yourself first. This may sound selfish but realize that not putting yourself first is yet another way for you to create an excuse to eat. If everyone else is so much more important than you are, why shouldn’t you eat? Today is the day to change this. You are important and you deserve to feel good and healthy about your eating habits. Pleasing other people is not your job. You have to learn to take care of yourself now, to stay in good shape, so that you do not become a burden on others at a later date.

 

Learn to Say No

 

Saying no is an important part of not only your recovery but your life as well. As emotional eaters and food addicts, we often feel we have to please people to make them want to be with us. While we do this in many ways, the most common is agreeing to things we really don’t want to.

 

Think about how many times you have said yes to helping someone when you really didn’t want to. Consider how much energy you have put into doing things for others that they are capable of handling themselves. Each time you have said yes when you didn’t want to, you have harmed yourself.

 

Cooking or Baking is Not the Only Way To Express Love!

 

Our emotional conditioning has taught us that baking for our family and friends is a means of showing love. Yet, how true is this really? When you put effort into baking things for others what are you really accomplishing? Eating foods high in fat and calories is destructive to the health of the people you love. These types of foods contribute to many health problems that actually cause harm. Obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and high blood  pressure are only a few of the physical ailments that come from overeating baked goods. Emotionally, the dangers are just as serious. When we associate cookies cake and choclate with affection we detach ourselves from truly learning how to express and receive love.

 

Today, make a decision to stop using baked or fried items to express your feelings for others. Instead, learn to show love in other ways. Do something nice for those you care about that doesn’t involve food. Make a special trip to a place or out to a movie. Go on a drive, watch a play. Realize that a handmade gift or card speaks just as loud as brownies, but contains none of the unhealthy ingredients. Learn to show love in new and different ways that don’t involve food. You’re not the only one who will be healthier for it.

 

Food has nothing to do with happiness. Its just about nutrition. 

Connect With Your Inner Self

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Reset your neurohormonal dashboard. Connect with your inner divinity; control your cravings by accessing the true you that’s in your mind and in your heart. How can you do this? Try a ten-minute morning meditation. Commit to a yoga class. Find a way to feed your soul in non-food ways. Close your eyes and focus on nothing but your breathing. If you can control stress with mindfulness and self-care, you have another tool to help break the habit of reaching for food when what you really need is to calm yourself.

Interrupt your pattern. Your biochemical urges will quiet down if you change up your routine and avoid slippery situations that directly lead to binge eating.

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How to Track Your Progress

 

Many women rely on the scale to tell them whether or not they’re making progress, but the scale isn’t a good representation of all of the changes in your body composition that happen when you make intermittent fasting a regular part of your lifestyle. Sometimes diet and efforts at the gym just don’t pay off on the scale. If weight loss is one of your major goals (and even if it isn’t), make sure you take measurements before you add any kind of weight loss protocol into your lifestyle.

 

Measurements give you a much better picture of how well you are progressing because as you turn fat into lean muscle mass, you can lose inches and drop pant sizes without seeing significant dips in the numbers on the scale. When taking your measurements, make sure you are wearing tight-fitting clothing or no clothing at all. If you choose to measure yourself clothed, try to wear the same clothes every time, unless they become really loose and baggy. 

 

Next, grab a flexible measuring tape, measure around the chest, across your belly button, widest part of your hips, largest part of each thigh, largest part of each upper arm. Take your measurements every four weeks and be patient as you go. Small changes are still changes, and over time they all add up resulting in a huge reduction.

 

Fasting

 

Nothing speeds up weight loss more than fasting. The more the duration of fast the more the weight loss. Unsupervised intermittent fasting may or may not help a person lose weight. In contrast, extended fasts almost always help in visible weight reduction. Including nutritious whole food plant-based diet during the eating phase of fasting does wonders for your health.

 

Fasting will fix your broken metabolism and help lose weight. You will break the relentless cycle of stress and weight gain. You won’t be constantly bloated, stressed, or sleep deprived. You will grow the happy and diverse bacteria that keep you lean and fit. Reaching these goals begins with awareness and preparation. Once you do that, you will feel at home in your body again.

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Permanent Weight Loss Formula

Here’s my priority list for people who are serious about losing weight permanently. 

1. Switch to Whole foods plant based diet, mostly raw. Eat probiotic rich foods.

2. Bring about more eating discipline in your life.

3. Eliminate all animal proteins including dairy, processed and packaged foods.

4. Include foods that suit your Ayurvedic Prakaruti.

5. Include apple cider vinegar that has mother.

6. Frequently resort to extended fasting. 

7. Kidney and Liver cleanse to be done every 15 days.