Suffering from emotional eating?
This thing only increases the appetite
Do you find yourself over and over again starting a diet and after a short time falling into uncontrolled eating?
The problem is not with you, diet is just not the solution.
What are the reasons for this, and what can be done?
Tali Nahum
06/05/2022
Friday, 06 May 2022, 06:31 Updated: 06:45
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Here it happens again.
You find yourself in front of the fridge eating uncontrollably, having a hard time stopping and not understanding how you got into this situation again.
After a round of pangs of conscience and self-anger, you gather yourself and try to "get back to the better".
Start the menu again, organize meals, but after a short time - fall into it again.
And the loop continues.
Today marks the world as a "day without diet", and this is exactly the opportunity to understand why diet is not the solution to emotional eating, how diets only increase uncontrolled eating, and what is the solution after all.
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1. Forbidden or allowed?
A diet usually includes a set of rules, including foods that are allowed to be eaten and those that are forbidden.
Even if the diet includes a "chit mill" or a "pampering" meal in which you can eat what you want, the message is still that the rest of the time it is forbidden.
What's the problem with that?
The ban on certain foods gives a sense of punishment, and also really sucks, hence the need to compensate myself.
Most people will find it difficult to maintain such a framework over time (and rightly so), so at some point they will break the diet (and more than once it will be accompanied by pangs of conscience).
Forbidden or allowed?
Bitter chocolate (Photo: ShutterStock)
At times when we decide that we are "allowed", for example at events, weekends and more - in many cases we will have difficulty stopping.
There is a thought, incidentally usually not really conscious, that is now allowed and then forbidden.
Therefore the opportunity should be seized.
In this situation eating can be very fast, in an experience of lack of control and sometimes even in secret.
This experience may cause us to think of ourselves as wrong things, for example that we are weak in character and lack of willpower, and that we probably really can not resist temptations.
All of these only increase the need to categorize foods as forbidden, or enemies that should not be brought into the home - because the diet has taught us that we have no ability to resist them.
What is the solution?
In contrast, when everything is allowed, control and choice return to us.
We can choose whether to eat a certain food at a given moment, or choose not to - knowing that we can eat from it when we want.
Many people are afraid that in such a situation they will only eat ice cream and chocolate all day.
But as I will detail below, when you step out of thinking about diet, you realize that the choice of what to eat refers not only to desires, but also to the needs of myself and the body.
2. Confusion in feelings of hunger and satiety
In the diet eating is often by menu, or according to a quota of calories or points.
But these do not necessarily correspond to the needs of the body, and to the feelings of hunger and satiety.
If you have experienced dieting in the past, you may have found yourself drinking coffee to "quench" hunger, or trying to pull off until the next meal.
There is also often a message in the diet that one should eat small meals to avoid hunger, when in fact hunger is a normal and important physiological sensation.
Drink coffee to "shut down" hunger?
Just listen to the hunger of the body.
Cold coffee (Photo: ShutterStock)
What's the problem with that?
Our body has a natural mechanism whose function is to regulate the amounts we eat and adapt them to the needs of the body, and it communicates this with us through feelings of hunger and satiety.
When we lose attention to these feelings, we are not in touch with the body, and find it difficult to eat the amount the body really needs.
Within a diet, we may reach a state where we are hungry and unaware of it.
The body tries to tell us to eat, while we try to stick to the menu and ignore.
Eventually, this condition may end in the body "taking command" and finding ourselves in a bout of eating or experiencing loss of control over food.
In addition, if we have learned in a diet that we should beware of hunger, we may find ourselves eating often, or in larger quantities, to avoid hunger.
Even in this state we eat more than the body needs.
What is the solution?
When learning to eat attentively to feelings of hunger and satiety, one does not need a menu to know when and how much to eat.
Learn to recognize the convenient and obvious hunger, not be afraid of it, and start most meals with it.
Also in terms of satiety - we finish a meal when we are really full and we have peace of mind for a few hours, and on the other hand not in a state of explosion that weighs on us (and of course does not contribute to weight loss).
3. War against the body
In the diet there is often a feeling of going to war against the body.
There is a message that the body needs to be changed and repaired, that something is wrong with it.
We feel we need to mobilize all the willpower we have built, to "defeat hunger", control impulses and more.
What's the problem with that?
Our body is an integral part of us, and even if it has things we do not like - in the end it is with us for life.
When we go to war against the body, we are actually at war with ourselves - and that is exhausting, and harms the quality of life.
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What is the solution?
Live a healthy lifestyle out of a place of respect and concern for the body.
Appreciate the body for all it allows us to do (and think how many simple and everyday things are possible for us thanks to it. Even read this article now).
From this place, to see the body as a full partner in the journey, to accept and love it even if it has parts that are less loved.
This means for example eating right to nourish the body, and being on the move to take care of its needs.
In this place one can trust the body and its signals (see the value of the previous section of hunger and satiety), and know that the body will trust me back.
Tali Nahum is a clinical nutritionist, treating emotional eating and polycystic ovary syndrome, and lecturing on nutrition and a healthy lifestyle.
Has the video series "How to Eat It" for Dealing with Emotional Eating.
health
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diet
diet
Emotional Eating
Calories
