Stop Eating Your Emotions

The term emotional eating is very common these days. Many people do it and don’t even realise. It refers to the action of turning to food when you feel stressed, low, bored or facing challenging situations. Food can be very comforting and can ease those negative emotions. However, the feeling good part is usually short-lived and followed by guilt. Guilt that you’ve eaten something you probably shouldn’t have, something that may have knocked you off your weight loss path. 

Emotional eating can be a vicious circle for some as they eat to feel better, then feel bad for eating, then eat again to try and feel better once more-or because they already feel a failure and so, why not? 

This week Pascale is focusing on coaching you into becoming aware of your feelings and the behaviours that follow them. Recognising this will help you to establish alternative behaviours that won’t lead you to another negative spiral.

If you visit the Secret Slimmer’s Facebook page you will be able to download your workbook and in there you will find your Cravings Diary.

Your Cravings Diary

To be able to understand your current craving habits it’s important to record when you feel that you want to eat something outside of the plan or find a blip coming on. When you notice a craving coming on, ask and answer the following questions:

• What’s the situation? 
• Who are you with? 
• Where are you?
• What is the time?
• How are you feeling emotionally?
• Where does it feel in your body? 
• On a scale of 1-10, what’s the intensity of the craving?
• How did you handle it? Did you avoid a blip or give in?
• How did you feel emotionally afterwards?
• How satisfied are you with the outcome?

You can use the diary that you downloaded to answer these questions and see if you can spot a pattern or repetitions after a while.

Don’t forget that if you do blip, you shouldn’t give yourself a hard time, it’s all part of the journey. 

Handle your craving better

Having a better picture of your cravings and behaviours around them will help you spot potential triggers. Once you know what they are you can better prepare yourself for future challenges. 

Catch Pascale on Sunday at 5 pm over on the secret slimmer’s page this Sunday 15th August to get more in-depth information on how you can fill out your Cravings Diary and work towards overcoming those pesky cravings.