Are you eating for your body or emotions?

Mindless, Binge Eating!

Are you eating for your body or emotions? Ways to deal with emotional eating.

Guys, accept the fact that we don’t always eat simply to satisfy our hunger pangs. We also turn to food for our comfort, combating stress, as a pick me up or often even as a reward. So food becomes your go-to when you are sad, angry, lonely, bored or tired! Sadly, however, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional issues. It makes you put on weight, makes you feel guilty and worse afterward. Learning to recognize your emotional eating is the first step to changing your habits. Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better, to fill emotional needs, not your stomach.

Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better, to fill emotional needs, not your stomach.

We give you a few quick pointers-

1. Healthy House: Avoid junk food in the house, you can’t binge on it. Stock up on unprocessed, low-calorie, low-fat foods, organic, fresh fruits and veggies, hummus, unbuttered popcorn for munching.

2. Trigger Factors: The next time you reach for comfort food, question yourself if you are really hungry. If not, try to figure out what emotions you are feeling. And most importantly maintain a food diary on your mood food intake. You’ll get your answers!

3. You can come up with alternative behaviors that can help you cope up. Simply go for a walk, take it out on a punching bag, distract yourself by calling a friend or simply surfing the internet.

4. Be kind and compassionate to yourself!

Tamanna C, an Angel Therapist, Psychic Healer, Soul Coach, Author & New Age Spiritualist gives us her theory of emotional eating. “ We may not realize but our mental and emotional level play a very important part on our physical being. I often share with people that we are made of 5 dimensions- Aura- the energy shield around you, physical level- your body, Mental level- thoughts, beliefs, perception, brain processing, Emotional level- feelings, sense, emotions, Psyche/ Soul level- karma and wisdom. Now a block on any of these levels will create a block or imbalance on another level. For example, if you are physically unwell, it will reflect in your auric field, making you feel more weak with weak immunity, it will eventually lead to mental stress and emotional insecurity.

It is scientifically proven that there is an emotional/mental reasoning behind every disease/ailment including something as terminal as cancer.”

Now coming back to how emotional stress can lead to overeating, she elaborates. “Whenever we work with our levels of 5 dimensions, we consume energy. If we physically exercise we need the energy to replace it, hence we feel hungry. When we think too much or overwork, we need to balance it with energy.

Similarly, when we are emotionally low or drained, there is consumption of energy due to which we land up eating more than our normal intake/ capacity.

It’s also proven that in any healing work, especially with light workers/ healers our consumption of water/ salt/ sugar is more than normal. I need 12-14 liters of water and a little extra salt in my food since I’m not much of a sugar person. Emotional stress usual involves feeling fear, insecure, angry, low, upset, sensitive, cranky etc. while our emotional energies are at play, we land up magnifying the problem more than what it is. There is nothing wrong in it but it’s just human nature due to which there is more energy burning than the usual. In order to balance the outgoing energy, we consume food which is physically not needed by us, resulting in putting on weight/ fat. Just because we are emotionally low, doesn’t mean we must physically torture our self and later realize and regret what was not needed.”

Here are some tips from Tamanna C, to deal with emotional healing-

1. Whenever you find yourself eating more than the usual, ask yourself is it my body that needs to or my emotions. bring your awareness to the root cause.

2. The moment you get aware of your need, you affirm – I will only eat as much my physical body needs and can sustain without causing any imbalance in my physical body.

3. If you are craving sugar (which most of the people do when emotionally low) always have a sweet/ candy which is high on sugar and less on fat, rather than indulging in fatty desserts/ chocolates/ ice cream. Another short cut just has a spoon of sugar directly as it will give you the energy rush that is needed, cutting down the need for you to binge on unnecessary sweets.

4. If you are craving salt, have a packet of salted wafers. Not that it’s the healthiest option but again its potato and salt which gives the much-needed energy, rather than you binging on other savory/ fried food.

5. Have as much as water as you can.

6. Always balance your meals. If you are having excess sugar during one meal, balance it with salt in the next meal. Don’t overdo anything, else it will lead to repulse reaction, which in turn will make you feel sick.

7. Having any kind of herbal tea also reduces emotional level quickly, cutting off the unnecessary craving you have.

8. Another technique is to start on the spot jogging or jumping or just deep breathing. This helps increase metabolism rate, so even if you land up eating more than usual you can burn the food faster feeling less lethargic.

9. Never ever sleep after eating. It’s very normal to feel emotional, stuff your face with comfort food and pass out or get into TV coma. It’s the worst thing you can do to your body and emotional level. You are just numbing your pain with food and not dealing with it.

We may not realize the way we let our emotions effect the way we look. Balance it off in a manner that it doesn’t ruin the way you look, because if you don’t look good to your own self, it will create even more emotional insecurities/ fears and blocks creating a circle which will be very difficult to break. So keep a check on your emotional eating patterns, rather than getting carried away and ruining your precious body.

Lastly, no situation or person is worth ruining your body for, so choose and eat wisely! Respect your body, because you’ve crossed lifetimes to incarnate into this lifetime in the body that you are.