Comfort Eating – What’s At the Route of It?

comfort eating

Have you ever met up with a friend for coffee, intending just to have a coffee, but on seeing the cakes and muffins been thrown into a bit of a spin?

You find yourself sat down with a big lump of cake, and you know you’re going to feel guilty when you’ve eaten it. But you eat it anyway.

A lot of people know how to eat a lot healthier than they actually do i.e. more fruit and veg, less sugar and processed rubbish. But despite knowing this their food choices are very different to what they know is better.

Comfort Eating is a Relatively New Thing

Our ancestors ate when they could and they ate whatever was available.

We have food available the whole time and we have massive choice too. As a result people now eat for many different reasons, and genuine physical hunger might not be at the top of your list.

Comfort Eating – What’s the Cause?

Everything you eat starts with a decision. This could be because you are hungry, but in the case of the ‘accidental’ muffin purchase something else was at play. Decisions about food are often dictated by a feeling or emotion.

Emotions can have enormous power to direct your eating decisions, and they are often the complete opposite to what you want.

Comfort eating results from a lack of a particular skill that helps a person cope with their feelings. Because these feelings aren’t dealt with they are numbed out instead with comfort food.

These skills include the ability to recognise, understand and MANAGE your emotions. The solution to comfort eating is to learn how to identify what you’re feeling in that critical moment of deciding whether you need to eat, and then what to eat. Anyone can learn this.

Learning about nutrition is really important but if you have problem with comfort eating that needs to be dealt with first, otherwise this new knowledge won’t get you far.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m writing the section of my book that’s devoted to comfort eating. What would you like to know about this?

If you’re interested in learning everything you need to know about losing weight sign up to my newsletter and be among the first to know when my book is ready (later this year).

Please share this blog if you have enjoyed it.

Have an Uber Healthy week

Dr Julie

PS Congratulations to Andy for winning June’s free place on Uber Slim, my online weight loss program.

If you would like a chance to win the one on offer in July make sure you’re signed up to the newsletter, so you know the one easy question to answer. This is the last free place on offer for a while.

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