Emotional Eating
There are a plethora of pitfalls one could succumb to while on their journey to fitness and better health. It could be skipping some workouts, to allowing to many indulgences to sneak into your diet. Often times, people see some progress and use that as a rationalization that it’s now ok to become more lax with their dietary discipline, but for others, it’s about emotional eating. Emotional eating is not when someone who cries about the prospect of eating vegetables, but rather one who, more often than not, makes poor dietary choices because it’s a return to their safe zone, so to speak.
Comfort food is another way of looking at emotional eating, but in this case, it’s about consuming it too often, or in too great a quantity. Some people, when stressed, will turn to the bottle, drugs, etc. Others will turn to food. Non of these options does much to help the problem, obviously, but it makes these people feel better, at least for the time that they are indulging themselves.
The downside to succumbing to the temptations of the comfort zone, in this scenario, is that not only will you feel disappointed with yourself for allowing it to happen, but you can also derail your journey. Fitness and health, like most worthwhile endeavors, requires consistency and hard work in order to get a good end result. If you allow yourself to fall off here and there, it’s harder and harder to get back on track and the necessary momentum can easily be lost.
Overcoming emotional eating can be very challenging as it involves deep rooted emotional associations. One suggestion I offer to clients with this affliction, is to take it 1 day at a time and make sure you recognize your progress within the spectrum of both dietary choices, as well as physical changes brought about by your hard work and good choices. It’s a lot easier to stick with something if we can see and appreciate quantifiable progress.
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Andy
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