Almost everyone experiences cravings at some time or another. While sometimes our cravings can seem to overtake our rational thoughts and make us want to eat foods that we know are not good for us, they are not always a bad thing to be scared of.
What is your body really need when a craving hits? Find out the physical and emotional signals that are sent by your body as a craving that needs to be met.
We all face difficulties in life- breakups, the deaths of family and friends, job loss, rough days, and general sadness. These situations often leave us feeling heartbroken, confused and at a loss with how to deal with our emotions, and this is where journaling can play a major role in supporting us through these yet unpredictable and sometimes difficult to handle situations.
There are many emotional associations we have with food- positive and negative. When we eat because we are bored, lonely or tired we are triggered by our feelings and not physical hunger. Learning to be mindful, to deal with our emotions and connect with food in a positive way to support our mood can break the cycle of feeding our emotions.
We’ve all been there- eaten way too much at the lunch buffet, taken thirds of our favourite dinner, or not been able to stop eating until all the popcorn/the entire block of chocolate/whole jar of peanut butter was gone. It might feel like our off-switch is broken, and we end up feeling fat and bloated. This then escalates into a barrage of negative, mental self-talk, and being shrouded in guilt and shame and self-loathing. It is a dark downward spiral.
It might seem like it’s impossible for you to know when to stop eating, or that you always give in to your cravings, however with implementing these three simple mindset tools, you should find that it is much easier to stop overeating.
Along with techniques such as intuitive eating and using a hunger and fullness scale, these lesser known mindset adjustments could be the missing ingredients when it comes to working on weight management and reducing food (sugar) cravings for good.
That expression “do everything in moderation” has been around forever, but how hard is it to actually live a life of moderation? For most of us who are trying overcome binge-eating or emotional eating, moderation seems nothing but elusive, right?
There is a constant cycle of excess then deprivation, then excess again. We will deprive ourselves of food we love, or cut our whole food groups which we worry will trigger us to binge, or embark on extreme exercise, or drink ourselves into oblivion. It seems we are trapped between two extremes where there is no middle ground- it is black or white, with no grey area where moderation exists.
Of course, living our lives on either end of the spectrum is unhealthy- not just for our body and mind, but for our souls. We should be able to eat comfort foods occasionally, and really enjoy those foods without any guilt. We should be able to have a couple of drinks a few times a week without becoming drunk. We should be able to exercise so that it feels good and allows our body enough to time to rest and recover and not be injured.
So, what’s the trick to being able to eat, drink and exercise in moderation most of the time rather than taking an all or nothing approach? Mastering motivation requires practicing these six things regularly. When you do, it becomes easier to avoid the extremes and excesses and it’s then possible to reach a state of equilibrium that is healthy as well as enjoyable.
What I want you to know, is that it IS possible to stop this reckless cycle of over-eating and bingeing- for good. And, it really isn’t that hard to do with some simple shifts in the way you think in your relationship with food
There are so many reasons why we binge eat. Sometimes the idea of eating a whole jar of peanut butter is just too irresistible. Or perhaps the delicious dinner you have just eaten was too good not to have third helpings of.
It can sometimes be a feeling of sadness or loss of control in some area of our life that leads us to mindlessly eating a whole packet of Oreos or Pringles, perhaps in an attempt to feed our emotions rather than feeling them.
Whatever the reason, the outcome is often the same at the end. A feeling of disgust, guilt, shame. It can be scary when you feel like you have lost complete control of you mind and actions, but I assure you that you’re not going crazy and that with some practice, it is possible to reign-in the binge-eating patterns. Follow these 9 tips to put an end to binge eating once and for all!
I don’t know whether to blame the media, or food companies and their propaganda, or the proliferation of fast food and junk foods, but an observation I have seen with my clients and people around me is that we have forgotten how to know what to eat.
There has become an over-reliance these days on diet books and crazy eating plans to tell us what to eat and when. If we are not following the advice of the latest fad diet, or trying to stick to a meal plan, it leads to mindlessly eating. This might mean stuffing food into our mouths while on the go or when engaged in some other kind of activity, just for the sake of eating.
The pleasure of eating and enjoying food seems to have disappeared, so that instead of slowing sown to enjoy all there is about the food we will eat, we eat without even taking note of a single taste, smell, texture or other sensation. This in turn leaves us feeling unsatisfied and then looking for more to eat to meet the craving that hasn’t yet been met.
Our instincts have faded and are hiding so deeply within us that we have lost the ability to know what to eat for our bodies to be balanced and healthy, and we are feeling more confused than ever.
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