Breaking Emotional Eating

It is a common knowledge supported by studies that in order to become leaner and slimmer we need to do three things: eat less, exercise more and have enough good sleep.

What contributes to overeating? There are four main contributors.

The first is an emotional or comfort eating when you eat to change the way you feel.

The second is when there are certain meals that you crave and over-eat them compulsively. It happens like an automatic habit and an addiction might be formed too.

The third is a fast eating habit which does not allow noticing the body signals to stop when the body is satisfied.

The fourth is dieting when you starve yourself or eat what you should (not what you want) long enough than your body can stand and then when the food is there you eat more than you need.

Craving, fast eating and obsessive dieting are learned habits and they can be unlearned successfully in a very fast manner with specific set techniques. Although, according to studies emotional eating is the most challenging and timely part in weight management and it can be successfully resolved.  Emotional eaters repetitively treat food as ‘drug’ to quickly change the way they feel and because of that repetition they form habit and addiction like patterns (to certain food or any food). And again, as any learned behavior it can be unlearned with a special set of techniques.

What to expect

After an initial short phone or e-mail consultation we schedule an in-person (or via Skype) assessment session. But before the assessment session I send you a pretty comprehensive intake form to fill out and send me back by e-mail or post mail. Or, if you prefer, we fill it out together during the assessment session. However, when I have it before the assessment session it saves us a lot of time.

The assessment session is free of charge. During that session we have a chance to get to know each other. Then I gather information about your eating, exercising and sleeping patterns and your conscious and unconscious reactions to the issue. Finally, I use couple of techniques to find out if I can help you or not. The assessment also highlights how many sessions you would need. If I can help you, I describe how the process goes, how many sessions it might take and what is your investment. Then you receive answers to all your questions and make a decision.

If you do not have any sleeping issues and move around or exercise enough we start with exploring emotional issues (sometimes compounded with stresses) that most of the time stand behind unwanted eating patterns. If you know what your emotional issues are then we move quickly to the next step. If you do not know, we check any possible uncontrolled emotions behind the pattern. We also check any unrecognized and unresolved grief, loss, broken heart, as well as lack of purpose as covert contributors to emotional eating.

As soon as we identify emotional issues we work with them as it is described on the page Managing Emotions. 

If there is no emotional issue involved and it is just a bad habit we works with it as described on Breaking Bad Habits page.

After you learn how to resolve emotional problems and manage emotions I guide you through set of technique to break the emotional eating habit and develop new healthy habits. You learn the difference between genuine and emotional hunger as well as practice how to recognize and keep emotional eating under the control. For more information on breaking habit you can consult Breaking Bad Habits page.