Emotional eating

While I may be able to eat myself thin I doubt very seriously I can think myself thin. The folk over at Blackdoctor.org seem to disagree however:

Exercise is only half of the equation; what you eat is the other half. Your attitude towards food can either make or break your weight loss regime. Follow these simple rules to slim down.

The Way to Eat

Eat MUFA. Monounsaturated fats (MUFAs for short, pronounced MOO-fahs) come from the healthy oils found in plant foods such as olives, nuts, and avocado. Include a MUFA at every meal. Incorporate a serving of one MUFA-rich food every time you eat.

Have a clear calorie goal. Consume four 400-calorie meals a day. Significant weight loss requires calorie control. For the average woman, 1,600 calories per day is ideal because it’s low enough to create weight loss while maintaining energy and preserving calorie-burning muscle.

Eat often. Have a meal every 4 to 5 hours to help control your blood sugar and hunger and keep your metabolism in high gear.

The Way to Think

Manage stress. This emotion causes a spike in the hunger-stimulating hormone cortisol, sending you straight for the sweets. And when cortisol is high, extra calories are deposited directly as belly fat.

Ask for help. Among people who have permanent weight loss, 70% reported having strong social support, compared with only 38% of those who lost and regained weight. Recruit others to join you (or encourage you), or sign up for an online support group…Keep reading.

The “mangae stress’ tip I can relate too. Not only will you eat yourself fat if you’re reeally stressed, but no matter how much exercising or eating right you’re doing the weight willnot come off.

Talk about frustrating.

As far as asking for help, studies have shown that black women in particular lose weight in groups, but not so well solo, so if you have some freinds you can join up with so so. Hell, make a game/competition of it. Loser has to by everyone dinner…or something.

If anybody has been reading this blog as late than you know that Ive been struggling in the weight category. You know that the extremely high stress situation I find myself in has had me turning to food – mainly sugar- for support. The thing is though that most of the eating has to do with boredom. Currently I’m caregiver to my mother, occasionally my two young sisters and of course, my 4 year old daughter. No one else. Just me. Day and day out.

Without going into too much detail my mother is a difficult woman, one who I have been trying to please all of my life to no avail. If I was to be completely honest I am incredibly resentful of the current situation because I wasn’t supposed to be back in my hometown. Some promises were made that didn’t pan out and at the last minute I ended up living with my mother instead of having my own house. Now I realize, regardless of what I was doing or where I would have been living, all roads led home because of my mom’s heart surgery.

Now I find myself stuck in the house, with no outlet, responsible for a house full of people and a rather large house without a whole lot of help as far as taking care of my mom goes. Each day I wake up and there is nothing, absolutely nothing to look forward to. Each day I just pray for the day to end, in hopes that each day I wake up and go to bed brings me closer to the day I can have my life back. I’m bored. I’m defeated and I feel like at 29 my life as I know it is over.

Now there’s a lot I”m not saying, a lot of history and a lot of anger…but the 20lbs I’ve put on in the last couple of months is because food is the only thing interesting in my life right now. It’s the only thing I have some control over. I don’t go out. I don’t do anything, but take care of a house full of people and work…when I can. It’s frustrating and there’s no sign that it is coming to an end anytime soon. I’m holding on by a thread.

There’s no joy in this house. So I use Oreos to find some peace that I’m not getting anywhere else. And part of me doesn’t care, because what does it matter? No one is going to see me anyway. I don’t leave the house except to go to the grocery store or take my daughter to the park. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so defeated in my life and the only bit of joy I have is in the food I eat.

I recognize that this has to give at some point. 170lbs is horrible. I can’t imagine 200lbs. But right now it is what it is. But that’s why eat. There just ain’t shit else to do.

So I was searching the web for some practical solutions to emotional eating but kept coming up short. So I thought well, I can offer what (little) advice I have on how to deal with the problem.

1. Run. LOL. Or simply put find some other way to channel whatever energy you have that you’d rather put into a pint of Haagen-Das, a bag of oreos or whatever you favorite comfort food is.

I used to be a really angry person for a lot of different reasons. Eating was one way to deal with that anger, sex was another (that’s another conversation) but EXERCISE was the best. Nothing mellowed me out faster then doing 20-30 minutes on the treadmill or punching a heavy bag or running. The idea was to exhaust myself so that I wouldn’t have time to worry or stress about what upset me.

2. Bargain with yourself. Like I said in the last post I made a deal with myself. Eat all of the good stuff (fruit, veggies, whole grains, etc.) during the day and then ice cream is my reward. And let me stress to you how much I Luuuuuvvvv ice cream.

3. Wait it out. What I mean about this is that if you find that you’re craving something to eat but know you’re not really hungry give it 10-15 minutes before you indulge and most importantly go do something else. Call a friend, hit up a blog (preferably this one:-) ), clean something…whatever it takes to let the craving past.

That’ s all I have for now but if you have other suggestions feel free to post them. This is a subject I will come back to a lot ’cause I suspect that many of us are eating for reasons that have nothing to with hunger and for us to lose and keep the weight off it is something we will have to understand and work on.

My name is T.S. Johnson and I am an emotional eater.

LOL.

Seriously, I eat for many reasons that have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with hunger.

I eat because I am sad, lonely, bored, depressed, angry, horny (yeah I said it) and for a host of other reasons that have nothing to do with satisfying a biological need. I wish I could sit here and tell you that I have conquered this issue and that’s why I’m currently losing weight but I’d be lying.

I don’t have any good answers for it. For me my emotional eating is usually not a problem. Since I turned 18 I have worked out regularly. So worst case scenario I wouldn’t lose any weight but I wouldn’t gain any either.

The problem would come when I wouldn’t be exercising as often or as hard as I should be then I would gain weight. Lots of it. This is basically what happened after I had my daughter. I was 130lbs right after and within a year I was 160lbs. SMH.

While I still passed what I call the “jeans test” ( I still looked good in a pair of jeans and plenty of people let me know it. LOL) I went form a size 4 to a size 10 and just thought I was the size of a cow. And much of the weight stemmed from a mix of depression, frustrations, stress and much more sedentary lifestyle then I was use to.

So what do I do now? Well I still eat for various non-hunger reasons but I made a deal with myself that if I eat most of the right things during the day (fruit, vegetables, whole grains, etc.) then I can indulge in a little ice cream.

I also decided I wouldn’t have any guilt about what I was eating anymore. If I had a bad day and indulged a little more then I should have then I’d say okay and I’d do better the next day. My system isn’t perfect but it works for me.

So my question for those of you who fall in the emotional eating category is: what do you do? What are your strategies for dealing with it? What are the reasons behind why you eat?

For those of you who read this and are thinking, “I have no idea what she is talking about it. I just don’t get it,” feel free to play armchair psychiatrist and offer your insight.

Eat and Think Yourself Thin?

The Way to Eat

The Way to Think

Emotional Eating: Why I Eat

More on Emotional Eating

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