Interesting article

[Guest guest]

Four Things EVERY Weight Loss

Surgery Patient Needs to Know

about Emotional Eating

It's very possible to be an emotional

eater and not know it.

Emotional eating isn't always as straightforward as feeling a feeling

("I'm anxious") and then choosing to eat.

Here's the tricky part. Over time, if you've learned to use food

as a way to cope with certain feeling states or situations, your brain may

stop identifying that you are eating for emotional reasons. For instance, if

when you're stressed, you reach for a snack to comfort yourself, over

time, your brain may stop telling you, "You are stressed and you are

going to try to cope with it by eating a cookie." Over time, your brain may stop identifying the

emotion and move directly to interpreting that stressed feeling as physical

hunger. You might not even realize that you are feeling stress. Your thinking

will go like this: Something stressful will happen and you will start wanting

a snack. You might even feel physically hungry. Food, not stress, will be the

central thought in your mind. If you are someone who feels hungry "all the

time," emotional eating could very well be playing a hidden role. Emotional eating and self-blame, shame and guilt travel together.

If you are feeling "out of control with your

eating," odds are that emotional eating is happening. The problem is,

if emotional eating goes unrecognized, or if we don't take it

seriously, it's easy to fall into a trap of guilt and self-blame for

not being able to "stay in control" of your eating. Shame and guilt are never

helpful when it comes to long term weight loss. They tend to breed isolation,

negative self esteem, decreased hope, and ultimately more emotional eating

and self-sabotage. If you are struggling with emotional eating and you

don't learn the tools you need to cope with the feelings, the odds are

that you will continue to feel out of control with food. If you don't take control of emotional

eating, it can take control of your weight loss plans.

Research studies of individuals trying to lose weight find that people who

eat for emotional reasons lose less weight and have a harder time keeping it

off. A recent study concluded that successful weight loss programs need to

teach clients how to cope with emotional eating in order to improve the

clients' ability to lose weight and not regain it. The risk of weight

gain is not the only reason that emotional eating is important to address.

Failure to address emotional eating—using food to cope with feelings

and needs and circumstances other than physiological hunger—can also

contribute to difficulties with cross-addictions after weight loss surgery. If emotional eating is something that you struggle with, it's

important to know that no diet and no weight loss surgery will fix that for

you.

Taking control of emotional eating requires learning new

effective ways to cope with your emotions—this

part isn't about the food. It's also important to know that learning new

tools to cope with emotional eating can be one of the most rewarding and

life-changing gifts that you can give yourself. Learning new ways to cope

with life issues and feelings allows you to tackle life head-on. When you do

this, food becomes simpler, and your life grows bigger, and ultimately, more

rewarding.