ManifestingWellBeing.com
Manifesting Well Being for Health and Success
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Oct31
What Emotions did you Eat Today? Did it slow your Weight Loss Progress? Mindfulness may Help
Filed under: Well-Being; Tagged as: appreciation, Deborah Barnett Ph.D., eating, emotional eating, emotions, focus, lose weight, mindfulness, weight lossNo Comments
What did you eat today? Chips? A hamburger? Cookies? An Apple? Most of us are aware of what food we eat on a given day. Some people also pay close attention to other ways of tracking what they ate, such as how many “points” the consumed or how many calories. The fact is that in addition to eating food, we also eat to suppress our emotions. As a result, because we are emotionally eating instead of to fuel our body, we may overeat, or eat foods that are less than healthy for us.To see if you are “eating your emotions,” first, look at what events happen before you eat. Pay special attention to the times when you eat between meals. Look at the events that happen before you eat, or the events that you are thinking of, before you eat. What was happening? Were the kids acting out, did you have a fight with your spouse, or did you have a stressful day at work? Any emotion, such as anger, frustration, disappointment, anxiety, excitement, can cause us to over eat or eat foods that are not healthy for us.
The next step is to become aware of what you are doing when you over eat or choose less than healthy foods. Are you watching television, talking on the phone, on the computer? To help you eat more consciously, here are some suggestions that will help to improve your digestion and support you in avoiding the temptation to overeat:
Eat slowly
Try to not do other activities while you are eating
Pay attention to the texture and flavor of what you are eating
Think kindly of yourself
Appreciate the food that you are eatingPreliminary results indicate that being more mindful may help to reduce weight. So the next time you find yourself feeling stressed and reaching for something to eat, it may help to take a deep breath and notice what is happening . . . .
Deborah Barnett, Ph.D.
www.ManifestingWellBeing.com
Manifesting Well Being for Health and Success -
Apr25
Mindfulness May Help to Regulate and Maintain Weight
Filed under: EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, Stess Relief, Well-Being, weight loss; Tagged as: EFT Emotional Freedom Technique, emotional eating, lose weight, maintain weight, mindfulness, weight lossNo Comments
- Mindfulness May Help to Reduce and Maintain Weight
There are many reasons that people want to lose weight. Most commonly, at least one reason is to look or feel better. I have suggested in the past that it is always good to start with your “why” – your reason for losing weight. American Chronicle has has a good post on the your why of losing weight.
Releasing excess weight gain is not an easy task for many people. Maintaining one’s ideal weight is often just as challenging. Often however, the challenge is not the amount of calories one eats, the correct diet, or the perfect exercise to “burn off” the fat. Often the issue is why the excessive or emotionally reactive eating is happening in the first place. I had a client who told me that she has always felt a “void” in her life, and she wondered if her emotional eating was a symptom of this.
Eating is a common attempt used to fill the void that many people can experience. Unfortunately the attempt to fill the void with food never works. The void can’t be filled with food, because the void is not physical. It is emotional and/or spiritual. The key then is to become more aware of the emotional triggers of eating, eating excessively and feeling out of control about one’s eating.Mindfulness based meditation is being researched for its effectiveness at helping to increase self-awareness, regulate mood and increase the ability to have an internal source of control. The Duke Center for Integrative Medicine conducts research on using mindfulness based meditation to help individuals maintain weight.To help soothe stress and anxious moods as a part of your effort to release excess weight you can utilized techniques such as the Emotional Freedom Technique used by Dr. Deb in her weight loss video.Deborah Barnett, P.h.D.www.Deborah Barnett.com
