CEUs are available at ALLCEUs.com/Eating-CEU
hey there everybody and welcome to this video on seven ways to stop
emotional eating i'm your host dr donnelly snipes
emotional eating means eating for non-hunger reasons including boredom anger depression guilt
grief etc emotional eating is not about getting too hungry and binging or eating too much because
it's yummy those are different issues people who eat too much because they just love food that
might not even be a problem for them people who binge or eat too much because they let themselves
get too hungry that's a totally different issue emotional eating is eating to help yourself feel
comfortable or to comfort yourself and feel safe when we were little you may have gotten a cookie
after you skinned your knee and your caregiver cleaned it up or after unfortunately people pass
on what happens everybody brings casseroles at least in the south that's what happens
a lot of times our culture has associated distress with soothing with food and people can carry that
on into adulthood if they don't learn other coping mechanisms that are at least as useful so what are
some of these coping mechanisms or tools that you can use to stop emotional eating the first one is
what i call a mindfulness journal or you can call it a nutrition journal or whatever you want the
purpose of this is to put some time between the craving or the urge to eat and when you're eating
put some time between the emotion and help you get into your wise mind so you can make a conscious
decision about whether you actually want to eat or you need something else so in the mindfulness
journal you're going to identify when it was what time of day why are you wanting to eat if you're
hungry great if you're sad if you're bored if you're just craving something okay put that there
what do you want to eat this will give you an idea if you're noticing that you're regularly craving
salty foods that may give you an indication about a underlying nutritional deficiency
it may not you may just crave salty foods when you get anxious but it's helpful to look at patterns
how will eating whatever this is that you want to eat make you feel better and what are three
alternatives you could do right now to help you feel better what are three other things besides
eating take a bath play with your dog go on a walk call a friend what's going to work for you
keep that mindfulness journal and and force yourself to complete it anytime you're eating
during non-meal periods another technique is to identify and anticipate triggers
and prevent the cravings identify alternate activities to increase serotonin dopamine and
gaba when we eat especially high fat high sugar foods it causes our body to surge
serotonin dopamine and sometimes gaba sometimes endorphins so it gives us this feeling of pleasure
it gives this of gives us a feeling of contentment in some ways so we want to recognize what things
might make us feel unsafe or upset and how can we address them in order to
do something besides emotional eating planning ahead of time goes a long way if you have a
rescue plan in place for when you start feeling anxious or when you start feeling bored
it's going to go a long way to helping you start taking steps toward conscious eating
chew gum and i've talked about this in other videos but chewing gum even if it's not bubble gum
actually helps trigger the relaxation response it triggers and stimulates the
vagus nerve so chewing gum not only can you not eat and chew gum at the same time
but chewing gum can also help you relax so that can be a interim step for a lot of people who just
desperately want to have something to chew when they're feeling anxious or bored
if they chew on the gum it gives them a flavor to focus on and it helps stimulate that vagus nerve
remove temptation so you're forced to choose a different behavior
if you tend to emotionally eat junk food then try not to keep junk food in the house
or at least keep it somewhere where it's harder to get to so it's not just sitting right out on the
right out on the counter where you see it every time you walk into the kitchen
start training yourself to only eat off a plate sitting down at the table not out of the bag
not standing at the pass through and not on the sofa you're going to sit
down at the table and put food on a plate and that's what you're going to focus on eating
when you start doing that then sometimes when you're tempted to emotionally eat you're like okay
i've got to put it on a plate and sit down and i don't really want to sit at the table right now
i'd rather be in bed or on the couch so do i really want food that bad
eat a healthy diet and i know that may sound kind of counterintuitive
the foods that we eat are broken down to make the hormones and neurotransmitters that help us
feel happy and relaxed and give us energy and all those things if you're not eating
a healthy diet then you're more likely to have an imbalance in your neurotransmitters
which may make you more predisposed to being emotional and engaging in emotional eating
and finally reduce your overall stress level to reduce dysregulation if you cope with
stress anxiety depression boredom by eating then if you start figuring out other ways to reduce
your stress then you're not going to have the need to try to self-soothe with food now you're
not going to make your stress completely go away that's not going to happen but a lot of times
most everybody i've worked with when we've gone through their stress inventory we found
that there were things that they actually could eliminate there were stressors there were things
they were ruminating about they were there were ways they reacted to situations that we
were able to work on so they were triggered for emotional eating they were triggered less often
if the videos on this channel have been helpful for you please support us in our mission to make
high quality practical content available to everybody you can support us by donating at
doc snipes dot com slash donate joining the youtube channel at doc snipes dot com slash
join or purchasing a thanks on any videos that you particularly like
emotional eating represents a way of coping with distress emotional eating can turn into
food addiction if it starts causing problems in one or more areas of your life if you
start choosing to stay home so you can eat instead of going out with friends or if after
you emotion you eat because you're self-soothing you feel too tired and bloated or uncomfortable
to do things that you normally would do then we might start seeing it move into food addiction
the techniques discussed can be helpful in the moment but ultimately it's going to be
important to address those underlying issues those things that are causing you anxiety and grief
and whatever other emotion you're trying to soothe with food because until you have other skills and
tools to deal with it or until you address that issue then it's still going to serve as a trigger
other videos you might find interesting include emotional eating at doc snipes dot com slash
eating dash list and this goes through all the videos that i've done on various eating
disorders intuitive eating etc a lot of people emotionally eat because they have a high level
of anxiety and if that's you check out the list doc snipes dot com slash dash
master that will take you to a master list of videos on anxiety treatment
and if you're a counselor there's a ceu course on emotional eating at all ceus.com eating dash ceu