Search Results for: emotional eating

November 3, 2022 By GOQii Leave a Comment

Feeding Your Emotions? Why You Need To Stop Emotional Eating

Remember the old adage – Eat to Live and not Live to Eat? We don’t always eat simply to satisfy hunger. There are times we turn to food for comfort, stress relief, or as a reward. It’s like an activity we do out of habit, like nail-biting, hair twirling, or finger tapping. Recent trends show that we habitually turn to food in response to certain emotions. For instance, eating chocolates or sweets when we’re sad or depressed. Whether you feel angry, sad, bored, or even excited—food can act as a buffer against these emotions. But is emotional eating good for you?

Emotional eaters know that it’s easier to stuff down our feelings with each bite rather than spilling them. Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional problems. It usually makes you feel worse. Afterwards, not only does the original emotional issue remain, but you also feel guilty for having overeaten. Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a hard time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.

Where Do You Start To Stop Emotional Eating?

But, before that, ever wondered why we turn to food when emotionally distressed? When we eat food, chemicals are released from the food in the body. These chemicals have a strong impact on our emotional health, since food and mood are intricately connected. We feel sadder when we’re hungry due to lack of neurochemicals in the brain. To elaborate, through eating, we experience changes in serotonin, endorphins and dopamine levels in our brain – all of which control our mood. Sugar, for example, causes serotonin in the brain which makes us feel more balanced and equitable. Anti-depressants use the same chemical mechanism to improve mood. So coming back to the point, how and what do we do to deal with this?

Recognize What Triggers You To Eat Emotionally

As I mentioned earlier, people eat for many different reasons. Which situations, places or feelings make you reach for the comfort of food? Each time you reach for food (or even feel a craving come on), ask yourself, “Am I really hungry or am I just responding to something else that is happening?” If hunger isn’t the reason, it’s not always easy to pinpoint the reason why you feel like eating.

By tracking your food (and related notes) more regularly, you could notice trends, like a tendency to overeat on Mondays, for example, and then pinpoint your true feelings from there. Ask yourself what it is about Mondays that leads to overeating (stress from getting the kids to school? Anger over going to a job you hate? or holiday deprived?) Notice if you tend to munch in the evenings. Is it out of boredom, loneliness, anger, sadness, anxiety or an unhappy relationship? Once you identify your emotional eating triggers, the next step is identifying healthier ways to feed your feelings.

Find Ways To Fulfill Yourself Emotionally

It’s not enough to understand the cycle of emotional eating or even to understand your triggers, we need to proceed to step 2, which explains you to feed your feelings better. In order to stop emotional eating, you have to find other ways to fulfill yourself emotionally. You need alternatives to food that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment.

Some alternatives you can test out are:

Call someone who always makes you feel better
Play with your kids or pets
Look at a favorite photo or a cherished memento whenever you feel low, depressed or lonely
If you’re anxious, expend your nervous energy by dancing to your favorite song or squeezing a stress ball
Take a brisk walk for fresh air
If you’re exhausted, treat yourself with a hot cup of tea, take a bath, go to a spa for a massage, or light some scented candles and wrap yourself in a warm blanket
Take a break or go on a weekend getaway
If boredom kills you, read a good book, watch a show, explore the outdoors, or turn to an activity you enjoy (playing an instrument, painting, etc)

Form Healthier Habits

Last step to deal emotional eating requires long term modification i.e. healthy lifestyle habits. When you’re physically strong, relaxed, and well rested, you’re able to handle the challenges that life throws at you in a better way. But, when you’re already exhausted and overwhelmed, any little hiccup has the potential to send you off the rails and straight towards the kitchen>refrigerator>food. Exercise, sleep, and other healthy lifestyle habits will help you get through difficult times without emotional eating. Make daily exercise a priority.

Physical activity does wonders for your mood and your energy levels, and it’s also a powerful stressbuster. Give yourself permission to take at least 30 minutes every day to relax, decompress, and unwind. This is your time to take a break from your responsibilities and recharge your batteries for the next day. Connect with others. Don’t underestimate the importance of close relationships and social activities. Spending time with positive people who enhance your life will help protect you from the negative effects of stress.

With an arsenal of activities you can do besides eating, such as trekking, journaling and distracting yourself in a positive way, you’ll overcome your emotional eating problems once and for all. You might not be successful every time, but if you accept your mistakes and move forward, continuing to work on your issues, consider yourself on the right path to stop the emotional eating cycle.

If you need help dealing with emotional eating, reach out to our experts who are always happy to help. Speak to a GOQii Coach now to help you overcome emotional eating and help you reduce weight. Subscribe for Personalised Health Coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

For more on weight loss, check out Healthy Reads. If this article helped you or helped someone you know, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

#BeTheForce

July 3, 2024 By Geetika Patni 3 Comments

Mindful Eating: Connect Back with your food – Part 5

I hope by now, you are all well aware of the do’s and don’ts of Mindful Eating through the series of four blogs. I have talked about the concept of Mindful Eating and how Mindless Eating can be harmful. I discussed why should you eat slowly to enjoy your meal (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-slow-down-and-enjoy-your-meal-2/) and shared some tips on how can you eat slowly. Then I took you through portion control and how to be wise (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-control-portions-and-be-wise-part-3/). In the fourth blog we talked of emotional eating and how it can be avoided (https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-mind-your-mood-part-4/). In the last of the blog in this 5-Part series on Mindful Eating, I will talk about connecting back with food and how one can do that.

Mindful Eating is eating with attention and right intention. It is eating with the intention to care for yourself. It is also eating with the attention necessary for noticing and enjoying your food and its effects on your body.

If you choose to eat each and everything you can lay your hands on, you indeed are disconnected from your food-the very ingredient of life that keeps you alive and going. And, when you are disconnected from your nutrition, you make yourself vulnerable to a host of illnesses, life-threatening disorders, and loss of longevity.

I was wondering-what makes us disconnected from our nutrition as we grow? For I am certain we were connected with our food when we were children (as that is how we learned that seeds sitting in an apple core can grow into an entirely new apple tree! And, that the water we drink doesn’t come from tap but, from a faraway river channel).

So, I have come to conclude that with time, our body just repeats what it has done previously as trained by the mind. These are nothing but habits. And unless our mind makes a choice, the body will not break the pattern even if it is a potentially harmful one. In terms of eating, since it’s the most repeated skill of all human behaviours, our mind has pretty much trained us to ignore eating and be on an autopilot mode while grabbing a bite. Thus, we don’t ask ourselves anymore-where do these strawberries come from? Or what goes into making a Pizza?

If we can turn around our ways and connect back with our meals, learning about the foods that will help us and those that will not, and make a conscious choice to pick the right dish at the right time by breaking the habit of eating everything at any time, a lot of our future troubles will get resolved. Turning into a mindful eater and making an informed choice-an intention to care for yourself-is what it will take.

To help you get connected, I am sharing some simple tips here with you today

1) Connect right from grocery shopping: Most of us go grocery shopping on weekends. And there is usually a long queue at the billing counter. In a hurry to finish our job, we just throw into our cart whatever is more attractive or convenient-which is mostly processed foods. To connect with your food, shop smart at the store itself.

i) Fill up your cart from produce section first. Once you have half filled up your cart with fruits and veggies, you’ll be less tempted to shop for processed and ready-to-eat meals.

ii) Read ingredient list and nutritional labels. Choose food products with short ingredient list, ingredients that you can pronounce, with 0 trans fats, no sugar or if at all, appearing last on the list, mentions whole grain composition, small per serving calories (and not per 100gm) and has fiber serving size >2 units. If a food product matches these criteria, it is worthy to be nourishing you.

2) Be a food critic: You don’t need to write a review or become a fussy eater. But learn the art of analyzing your food dishes. What are you eating? What are the ingredients that go into this dish? How is it prepared? How’s the aroma, texture, color of the meal? How does it make you feel? Knowing the answers to all of these questions will help you know why you eat what you eat and thus will help you turn into a mindful eater.

i) One player once mentioned to me he can’t stop eating ‘vada-pao’ the fried snack tucked between white flour bread. On my insistence, he made the attempt to analyze how he feels while having the snack. To his own surprise, he found out that it was only the act of tearing the bread apart and tucking in the fried snack, which appealed to him. He didn’t really enjoy the taste of the snack as much as he liked the procedure of eating it!

So to know yourself and your eating habits better, be a food critic.

3) Make an attempt to learn about your nutrition

# Know major food groups like carbs, proteins and fats and the minor but essential ones like vitamins and minerals. Know which food dishes you commonly eat fall in these categories and influence you.

# Know alkaline and acidic foods- because our blood pH is slightly alkaline (7.3-7.4) and to keep our system running efficiently, we need to maintain this alkaline pH. Your food choices will play an important role in this physiological action.

# Know various benefits of different herbs-cinnamon, turmeric, coriander, cloves, ginger, garlic, fennel, cardamom, coriander, saffron, fenugreek, garam masala, varieties of pepper, and so on. You have them in each and every single dish. They deserve your attention.

# Know how to eat your fruits right, what time of the day and how much and in what combination is good enough.

# Know combination of foods that can enhance each other’s nutritional values-like Vitamin C with Iron rich foods, Vitamin D and calcium rich foods and know what food combinations can interfere with each other’s absorption in the body like Iron and Calcium heavy foods don’t go well together.

# Know what meals are best options for pre and post workout nutrition

# Learn why you should not eat white sugar, white flour or white salt. Or have an aerated drink ever

# Know replacements for sugar and white salt and what you can do to beat down your sugar cravings.

# Understand why dark chocolates or nuts are good for you despite being calorific or why eating a healthy ‘mukhwas’ (mouth freshner) after a meal can be a good habit.

And, there are many more such small and simple things to know about your everyday nutrition. Keep asking your coach or make an attempt to read and learn yourself.

Mindful eating is much more than learning about your food or food choices alone or practicing slow eating, in the moment eating itself. It encompasses having a relationship with your food wherein you respect your meals and feel gratitude towards them.

To sum up, mindful eating is a way of nurturing your physical self, harmonizing your mental state, and satisfying your soul.

If you have been missing out on mindful eating, get on the mindful eating wagon now! If you found this information valuable, share your thoughts in the comments below and for more insights, check out Healthy Reads or for further guidance speak to a certified expert by subscribing to GOQii’s Personalised Health Coaching here.

#BeTheForce

June 23, 2024 By Geetika Patni 3 Comments

Mindful Eating: Mind your Mood – part 4

My previous three blogs discussed the concept of Mindful eating and how mindless eating can be harmful. In my second blog, I talked about why you should eat slowly to enjoy your meal and shared some tips on how to do so here. The third blog covered portion control and how to be wise with it here. Continuing in this 5 part series on Mindful Eating, today, I will take you through how stress eating can be harmful and should be avoided.

Have you noticed why buttered popcorn sells out quickly during a movie intermission? Or why you might empty an entire packet of Oreos or chips when you’re feeling emotional? That’s because certain foods can be emotionally comforting. In most cases, these comfort foods are high in fat and sugar and low in nutrition. They are comforting because they trigger neurons in the brain that create a false perception of well-being.

Turning to food to make you feel better is ‘Emotional eating’.

It’s not necessarily bad to eat food from time to time as a pick-me-up meal, a reward treat, or a celebration feast. However, if food becomes your primary coping mechanism for anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, frustration, or exhaustion, and your first impulse when upset is to dig into a tub of ice cream, it calls for your attention. Feeding your emotion with food may feel good at the moment but doesn’t resolve the underlying problem. Often, you may end up feeling worse later due to unnecessary calorie bingeing and the physical havoc it wreaks on your metabolism.

The guilt, feeling powerless over emotions, and impulse eating leads to an unhealthy cycle, causing physical and emotional turmoil. Despite the difficulty, it is possible to make a positive change. All it requires is some effort on your part.

To help you break this cycle and mindless eating habit, here are a few pointers that work best when followed in order:

Be Aware: Acknowledge your habit of emotional eating. If your near or dear ones have pointed it out or you know it by yourself, take it seriously! Awareness is the first positive step. Identify the emotions that lead to binge eating. Are they positive like exhilaration, victory, or success? Or negative like frustration, loneliness, anxiety, depression, anger, or boredom? Know your comfort foods, whether sweets, chocolates, ice creams or salty ones like chips, fries or some junk food like pizza, burger, maggi etc. that drive your emotional cravings. You may come up with multiple choices for multiple emotions and it is absolutely okay. You may also notice that your choice of comfort food is entirely different from others. So accept your unique patterns.

Tip: Maintain a food journal to help identify your emotions and associated foods, or use the food log feature in the GOQii app.

Know your Hunger cues: Identify why you wish to eat. Hunger cues can be physical or emotional. If your stomach is growling and it’s been a few hours since your last meal, eating a salad or any other meal will suffice. But if you can postpone your hunger, you are likely to stop once you feel full, without guilt. This is true physical hunger.

Contrarily, if your hunger is sudden, urgent, and you crave specific foods like cookies or chips, or specific types of foods like sweets and fried foods and you are likely to over consume, feeling guilty later, you are about to be snacking out of false hunger, then the head hunger is generated out of emotional cues.

Tip: Next time you reach out for a snack, check if it’s driven by physical or emotional hunger.

Cross check: Once you’ve identified your hunger cue, ask yourself why you are eating. Take a deep breath and get a clear answer. This helps put a check before the binge. If you’re reaching for a snack and unsure if it’s emotional, just ask yourself, “Why am I eating this?” Pause and reflect.

Tip: If it’s justified hunger, grab something healthy-roasted or steamed. If it’s emotional, respectfully place the dish aside.

Distract: Change your location once you put the dish aside. Go to another room or head outdoors. Find an alternative to food to fulfill your emotions. If lonely, talk to someone. If depressed or frustrated, watch a comic movie. For exhaustion, get a foot massage or take a warm bath. For anger, let it out or write it out. For anxiety, listen to your favorite music. If happy and wanting to reward yourself, indulge in your hobby.

Tip: You can also do some window shopping, reading, walking, exercising, meditating, or taking a nap which will give time to pass off the emotional storm and make you a stronger self- one who has more willpower to cope up with his/her feelings.

Giving In: Emotional eating is an automatic and mindless habit. Sometimes, before you know it, you’ve eaten half a tub of ice cream. If you can pause for a moment when hit with a craving, you can make a different decision next time.

Tip: When you feel the urge to give in, pause and reflect. Don’t shut out the craving. Wait and consider what’s going on in your head and how you feel. Even if you eat afterward, this reflection helps you understand why and prepares you for a better response next time.

If you approach your feelings with kindness, reining in emotions is not a difficult task.

Listen to your emotions, accept them even if they are negative and when you do so, your body will understand that it doesn’t need to overeat to comfort itself and/or protect itself from powerful feelings.

Learning to mind your mood this way enables you to repair your emotional responses and physical fitness. Seeking help from experts or a personal coach can bring a turning point. Reach out if you need help to enjoy a better physical and mental health.

In the last blog of the 5 part series, I will discuss connecting with your meals and share tips on transforming your relationship with food for the better.

To be continued……………

#BeTheForce

June 15, 2024 By Geetika Patni 7 Comments

Mindful eating: Control portions and be wise! – Part 3

In my previous two blogs, I discussed the concept of Mindful Eating and the harmful effects of Mindless Eating. In my second blog, I explained why eating slowly is crucial to enjoy your meal fully (check it out here). Today, continuing this 5-part series on Mindful Eating, I will take you through portion control and why it is a must.

Appetite is complex and dieting is a challenge.

With every passing year, it gets more harrowing. We end up blaming the food industry, which has, over the years, increased portions per package and per serving size by whopping 2-7 times than the recommended value. Most of these take-away food products and dishes don’t fit in a healthy eating plan.

Mindful eating is the key to fix this chaos. When we can’t change anyone else (i.e. food industry), we can still change ourselves.

The art of being in present when you are eating your food is termed as Mindful Eating. Eating mindfully has tremendous benefits – you really learn to taste food and realize your real favourites and dislike, thus knowing what foods best fuel your exercise, work and leisure. If you enjoy eating or your food experience, you tend to enjoy life better. The by-product of this mindfulness is also a healthy weight loss and maintenance, and even the reversal of lifestyle disorders.

Among the many advantages of this healthy practice, my favourite one is learning to eat when hungry and stop when full, avoiding overeating at any given time. I have maintained my weight for years by effectively practicing portion control.

This is difficult, yet the easiest way to lose weight, keep it off, and moreover, it’s a lifestyle change – something that can change this whole obesity epidemic. We all struggle with food. This may be the solution to eating our favourite food, yet controlling the portions and being fair to our bodies.

Portion control is easily achieved when you slow down your pace of eating. When you eat slowly, you become aware of when your stomach gets full and you also know how much to serve yourself and when to stop. Portion size and eating speed can be well explained through the famous ‘French Paradox’ which says that despite high intake of calorie-rich and fatty foods in France as compared to the US, the incidence of heart disease and overweight is relatively low in France.

It is well-documented fact that the French eat much slower than the Americans, thus ending up taking smaller portions. Sensible eating, therefore, works miraculously for the weight-watchers.

In this blog, I am sharing some good tricks and hacks that will help you prevent overeating and eliminate the need to diet ever.

When you first go through the list, pick up only 2 tasks which you can practice as your healthy habits. As you succeed, take up new ones gradually and implement them consistently to build in mindful eating approach for life.

Here’s how to practice portion control-

A) At home or for your regular eating

Replace your food plates with smaller plates or use a side plate as your main plate. The food portion has grown bigger, and by choosing a small plate (law of size-metrics), you will reduce your consumption.

Serve backwards – visualize your plate has 2 compartments. First fill up one half of it with veggies, both raw and cooked, and then serve other half of your plate with a portion of proteins (dal/curd) and carbs (rice/roti) combined. Eating veggies make you feel full, so serving it first on your plate and eating in larger portion quickly drives up the fullness quotient.

Sit Down to eat- even if it is a snack. You are making your meal more organized by sitting down when dining, and this habit will prevent on-the-go munching that you may be unknowingly overdoing.

Deep breathe before you start your meal. This works as ‘ringing the bell’ –bringing your attention to your next to-do task, which is feeding yourself. Gently inhale through your nose, filling your chest with air, drawing your shoulder upwards, and exhale through your mouth for a little longer. Now take your first bite or sip.
Dine! Don’t multitask- Eating while watching TV or while fiddling with your cell phone will distract you from your meal. And distraction will lead to over consumption. Put away all gadgets while eating and you’ll be surprised that going back to your smart phone after 20 minutes is so refreshing. Plus, the added bonus of having a satisfying meal.
Have liquid first – A glass of water or a bowl of healthy soup. Starting your meal with fluids will fill up your belly to prevent over eating. It will irrigate the lining of your digestive tract, making your meals easier to flow down, and, probably quench your thirst, which may be the real reason behind your rumbling belly.
Eat slowly – to finish a meal in no less than 20 minutes. You may realize you don’t need the second helping if you eat your meals slowly.
Get Smart with leftovers – Because no one is judging how clean your plate is. If you are done with dinner, don’t stuff yourself just so that you don’t have to pack up the remaining food. Wrapping up remaining food is a smart way (as leftovers taste better too!) or downsizing your cooking is another idea to prevent over consumption.
Snack from a bowl– and not from a bag or box. You may end up eating 50% more if the snack you are having is hidden from your view. Pour a serving in a bowl and then munch.

If you buy a bag of trail mix that reads 10 servings, divide the contents of the bag into 10 smaller bags or label it bold – ‘to be finished in 10 attempts’.

Out of sight-out of mouth – Keep tempting treats like chips, cookies, candies, and ice creams out of sight – high up in the kitchen cabinet or in the back line of the pantry shelf. Putting a fruit bowl, dark chocolate, dates, and nuts in the front row and within reach easily gets you to practice snacking.

Follow IN/OUT rule – When at home, the rule is to eat nutritious, balanced, and wholesome meals, avoiding all treats (White Sugar/breads/pasta/creamy desserts, and fried foods). When outside treat yourself to your favourite delicacies (but in moderation, lest you slip down the slope). This way you will be able to eat super healthy most of the time, and the occasional indulgences will soothe your soul.

Here are few suggestions to practice portion control outside home

When dining out –

Plan Ahead – Right when you start from home, put up a portion in head- “I’ll have only 2 glass of wine today”, “I’ll eat only 1 plate of pasta tonight”. When a plan is there, you only need to work on your determination during the action, so it makes sense to make a quick portion note prior to stepping out.
Survey the spread first (or read menu carefully) – By getting a sense of what are the foods available, you avoid heaping on excess of usual offerings because you didn’t realize earlier that the ‘can’t miss items’ were at the end of the line. So make your plate with intention and eat only what you really want to eat.
Order to serve your salad or soup first and entrée only after the appetizers are done with. A lot of food on the table and in sight will promote over eating.
Split and Share –the entrée with your dining partner. If eating alone, try doubling up your appetizer and skipping the main course altogether.
Indulge wisely – If you intend to end your meal with drinks or dessert, eat only half of your capability. Yes, it’s your treat meal! But a firm moderation now will prevent you from guilt trip later.
Split and share desserts too – or skip them totally and order yourself an unsweetened coffee/hot beverage to end the meal. Some metabolic push there! Plus you can always have a cube of dark chocolate when you reach home.
If Ice cream melts you away – Choose inedible dishes- say a cup over a cone, as your ice cream serving dish. Or if a cone gets you carried away, choose a kiddie, regular or sugar cone, as a waffle cone will increase your portion considerably. Avoid toppings or go for fruit based ones.
Tall and slim – Research says drinking from tall and slim glasses will cut down the portion of your drink by 20%, and so does avoiding exotic mixed liquor drinks. It’s that easy!
If you are travelling – Avoid heading to a restaurant directly. Instead take a pit stop at a fruit vendor first. A healthy snack before a meal will not spoil it, but help you portion mindfully.

Eating in moderation and compensating with a good round (or extra round) of exercising keeps one in balance. Avoid overeating and practice mindfulness – your ideal weight is just this one healthy habit away!

In my fourth blog, I shall talk about emotional eating. Very often, we find ourselves overeating or better to say indulge in mindless eating such as stress eating. Too happy indulge in over eating, too sad again indulge in over eating to feel good. The blog will take you through some pointers on how to avoid stress eating and satisfy your needs with mindfulness.

To be continued…

#BeTheForce

Feeding Your Emotions? Why You Need To Stop Emotional Eating

Where Do You Start To Stop Emotional Eating?

Recognize What Triggers You To Eat Emotionally

Find Ways To Fulfill Yourself Emotionally

Form Healthier Habits

Mindful Eating: Connect Back with your food – Part 5

To help you get connected, I am sharing some simple tips here with you today

So to know yourself and your eating habits better, be a food critic.

Mindful Eating: Mind your Mood – part 4

Mindful eating: Control portions and be wise! – Part 3

Transforming Health and Life: Dhiren Matani’s Inspirational Journey to Wellness

What’s Your Excuse?

Prioritizing Health: Kuntal Goswami’s Post-Pandemic Pursuit of Wellness

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