feel weak and famished. That is true starvation.
Get A Handle On Emotional Eating
Emotional Triggers
Even if you maintain an emotional diary for just a week, recording your thoughts and feelings about food may be a powerful tool for identifying and overcoming irrational eating.
Record your feelings and thoughts before, during, and after each meal. Consider if you really feel hungry. Why do I feel the way I do? Tell me what it is that I need. Can you help me figure out how to provide this demand?
Hunger Scale
Create and use your own “hunger scale” from 0, starving to the point of feeling sick, to 3, hungry with a grumbling stomach, to 7, feeling full and slightly uncomfortable, to 10, feeling sick and extremely uncomfortable.
What Emotion(s) Are Driving You To Eat?
What’s eating you isn’t what you eat, but rather the emotion(s) that cause you to consume. Master some other strategies for dealing with your emotions.
Doing something useful like going on a stroll, chatting to a close friend, working out, sleeping or anything else will help. You might convince yourself that it’s only a want that will pass by telling yourself things like “I can endure experiencing pain” or “Just because I believe that’s what I need, doesn’t mean it actually is.”
Use These Four Steps
Here is how to counteract the purely mental component of that unreasonable eating pattern:
There are four things you should do before you eat:
- Stop.
- Breathe.
- Reflect.
- Why do I want to eat now?
- Why this particular food?
- Is this what I really need?
- Choose. (Comfort foods can be healthy)