Grab a scoop of ice cream and end up finishing the bowl? Do the fries in the pantry keep calling your name? Do you keep eating and eating and you never seem to fill up? Most likely, you are addicted to food.
Overeating and food addiction are two different things. When you have eaten too much, you have eaten too much. A food addict may overeat or eat normally, but they are not just eating. Food is replacing other emotional needs. Eating could provide an escape from a stressful day at work, the pressure of family life, being lonely, angry, any number of emotions. Eating numbs your feelings. We can avoid alcohol, drugs, and gambling, but to survive, we have to eat.
Having a food addiction makes you feel helpless, but you can overcome it. The first step is to acknowledge and accept that you are a food addict. Rejecting this fact causes frustration, which fuels addiction. Acceptance gives you peace of mind.
These 10 tips will help you get off the roller coaster of food addiction.
1. Trigger foods. Know what foods cause you to overeat. Some of us prefer sweet, others savory, always carbohydrates. No one seems to have a craving for cucumbers. Know your trigger foods and be careful! When they are around, it is often best not to eat them, or eat them occasionally, with caution.
2. Feelings. The next time you overeat, ask yourself what is really going on. Are you alone? Depressed? Procrastinating? You may be bored. Get in touch with what you feel and take action. Eg if you are bored, call a friend, play video games, do something to avoid boredom, but do not eat. Get in touch with your emotions.
3. Red flag.Know when you are vulnerable to overeating. For some, it is the afternoons, there is not much to do. For others, it’s making poor decisions at lunch, which continues for the rest of the day.
Four. Move on. If you’ve overeat the day before, don’t starve yourself the next day. What’s done is done, keep going. Don’t look at how “bad” you were. Today is a new day.
5. Be assertive. If you want to eat healthy food and the gang goes out to eat ‘happy meals’. Talk loud. You can compromise, but only if you let people know how you feel.
6. Sting. If you know you will be hungry, bring healthy snacks from home. Bring water, vegetables, fruits, etc. Don’t let vending machines take you over.
7. Be careful with ‘diet foods’ Like an alcoholic who drinks non-alcoholic beer, ‘diet’ cookies and treats are just a stepping stone to the real thing, and 2 cookies can only be 50 calories, but what are the chances that an emotional eater will only eat two? ? ?
8. Perfectionism Know your limitations and don’t try to be perfect – no one can go on a ‘perfect diet’ indefinitely. Learn which foods make you feel good and which don’t, nourish yourself with them.
9. Eat. This sounds like mixed advice, but food addicts have a love / hate relationship with food. If they have eaten too much, they will punish themselves by eating too little the next day. This leads to disaster because when you are hungry, you will eat everything. As you know, food is the fuel that gives you energy, so don’t avoid it, eat healthy meals and healthy snacks, but eat.
10. Without guilt. If you’ve “fallen off the wagon,” get back on track. Don’t feel guilty about what you have done. Guilt is useless. You are an emotional eater, it won’t change overnight.
When you have a food addiction, you feel helpless. You are not. Accept the problem, watch out for red flags, know your triggers, and reflect on your emotional needs. Now you are taking over. When you take power, you have the opportunity to change.