Emotional Eating

Living beings need to eat and reproduce and we are elegantly wired in our genetics to achieve these two sacred acts with amazing purpose and consistency. The powerful instinctual drives to secure and consume The tragic human irony of emotional eating is that our desire for food can be at its highest when we are feeling our weakest and most vulnerable.

nourishment are intertwined complexly with emotions to create behaviors which, both consciously and unconsciously, serve to satisfy and soothe. The tragic human irony of emotional eating is that our desire for food can be at its highest when we are feeling our weakest and most vulnerable. Even with the best intentions, we can use food to try to suppress or distract us from negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, boredom, sadness, or loneliness and thereby sabotage our efforts to lose weight.

Compounded with these emotional aspects of eating, there are several foods (and they tend to be the foods we seek out for emotional reasons) which have powerful addictive qualities about them. Some of us are more prone to emotional eating than others and some are not even aware that they eat for emotional reasons. Remember, food does more than fill our stomachs...it also satisfies ancient biological desires buried deep within our genetic coding. Eating in response to physical hunger in order to replenish nutrient stores is a normal, natural process for life to thrive. However, when emotion and not physical hunger triggers eating, the communication that occurs between your brain and your fat cells become impaired. This, in turn, makes it very easy for you to put on weight, and very difficult for you to lose weight. Here are some clues that you may be eating for emotional, and not physical, reasons:

Physical hunger tends to come on gradually while emotional hunger comes on quickly

Emotional hunger is typically for specific foods (pizza, ice cream, chocolate) while physical hunger is generally more non-specific

Emotional hunger needs to be satisfied immediately, physical hunger can wait

Emotional hunger can come on even when you have recently eaten, physical hunger does not

Emotional eating can leave behind feelings of guilt, physical hunger does not

Thankfully, there are steps that can be taken to help regain control of our eating habits and return us to a path to achieve our weight loss goals.

Learn to identify hunger properly

Become aware of why you are driven to eat. Is your hunger a true physical hunger or are you eating out of habit? If you have eaten something in the past couple of hours, the craving for food may not be true physical hunger. Become engaged in some other activity for 10-15 minutes to see if the craving subsides.

Know your triggers

Keep a diet diary over the next few days. Write down what was going on before and after each time you eat. Keep track of what you eat and the quantity. Examine how you feel before, during, and after eating. Often times, patterns will be revealed and emotional triggers can be identified.

Seek healthy alternatives

Next time you are feeling negative emotions, try changing your response to them. Instead of heading for the kitchen, take a walk, treat yourself to a movie or hot bath, read, call a friend...do something you really enjoy doing.

Change your food shopping patterns

Avoid buying calorie dense, nutrient poor comfort foods. If they are not in your house, you will greatly reduce the chances of you eating them. If you feel hungry or have negative emotions, postpone shopping until these feelings can no longer influence your decisions. Replace your old comfort foods with nutrient rich, healthy options.

Keep blood sugar levels steady

Make sure you are getting a balanced intake of nutrients throughout the day by not skipping healthy meals and snacks. Erratic fluctuations in blood sugar levels make it more likely you will give in to emotional eating.

Manage mood with things other than diet

Exercise, sleep, stress reduction techniques, and creative play are among the most important methods of lifting your moods, but there are others as well.

Focus on the positive

We are all human and if you slip and give in to emotional eating, IT'S OK! Forgive yourself and focus on all of the positive aspects about weight loss...feeling better, looking better, improving your health.

Why come back for body composition?

The BIA (Bioimpedance Analysis) is an essential tool that we use here at NHT. When you stand on a scale, this only measures how much force is pulling you down to the earth because of gravity.

When you have a BIA done it gives us the following information:

Your fat mass in pounds and as a percentage of your total body weight
Your lean body mass - everything else that is not fat like water, organs, AND muscle
Your phase angle - how healthy your cell membranes are. Studies have shown that a higher phase angle is associated with a better prognosis when people have serious medical conditions like cancer or HIV/AIDS. Typically we see patient's phase angles go up as they lose weight and regain their health.
BMI - Body Mass Index is a number that is calculated by dividing your weight by your height squared. A healthy BMI for women is between 20-25 and for men 18-23.
Intracellular Water (ICW) - Having cells that are well hydrated is very important to cellular health. This percentage is not a function of how much water you drink, but how healthy your cell membranes are (Phase angle). As your phase angle goes up, your intracellular water will also go up.
ECM/BCM ratio - This is the ratio of extracellular mass to body cell mass. A low value is desirable and indicates a high ratio of body cell (active) mass to extracellular (inactive) mass. A healthy ECM/BCM ratio is under 1.0
BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) - This number tells you how many calories your body burns in a 24 hour period if you are sedentary.

These objective values help us to determine how your body is responding to our program, and when we might want to make changes to provide you with more effective care so you can continue to regain or maintain your health as you lose weight.

If you would like to receive additional information regarding our services or products, please give us a call at: 866-275-4424 or visit: www.hcgslimxpress.com

If you would like to schedule an Appointment Online click on the button below to get started:

Good Health,

Natural Health Technologies, Inc.
SlimXpress

Medical Weight Loss & Wellness Centers
(866)-275-4424

http://www.hcgslimxpress.com