Emotional Eating--The Stress of Emotions

Emotional eating has been identified as the single largest reason people gain weight back after they lost it and it's a well known fact that 95% of all those who lose weight gain it all back.

Everyday I read articles or books featuring a means of overcoming emotional eating. At first I was excited about what new tips I'd learn and was quickly disappointed.

Three of the top books on amazon.com for dealing with or overcoming emotional eating are:
Taming of the Chew by Denise Lamothe, Phy.D, H.H.D
Breaking Free from Emotional Eating by Geneen Roth
Shrink Yourself (Break free from emotional eating forever!) by Roger Gould, MD.

Would you believe that not one of these resources on emotional eating has a chapter on how to deal with emotions? Nothing about the cause of emotions? Nari an inference as to embracing emotions much less experiencing them.

Just go to google and set up alerts for emotional eating and you'll get article everyday re emotional eating. Unfortunately it's all old recycled advice from the fad diet era.

None of the articles or books recognize that emotional eaters don't eat because of particular emotions, but because of the stress the emotions place upon the over eater.

That's right, emotions themselves are stressful and the well recognized stress management techniques, i.e. call a friend, take a deep breadth, count to ten, do yoga, and so on just are simply silly advice for 95% of over eaters. It may be good advice but for the most part impractical. And none of this advice deals directly with the stress of the emotions.

For instance, do you like to feel malaise? bored? frustrated? confused? uncertain? anger? upset? down?

How about excitement? joy? happiness?

Most say "yes" to the second group of emotions and cal them positive and "No" to the first group of emotions and call them positive.

But do you know what you've just done?

You've just voted. You determined that there are some emotions you like and some that you dislike.

The reality is that emotions are different energy levels and it's our beliefs about them that make them bad or good. Yes it's what we believe about them that makes them stressful.

Yes this is the stress that makes us emotional over eaters and contributes to eating excessively.

Even happiness for instance can be stressful. "Don't be too happy, you'll set yourself up for a big let down."

It's beliefs of this nature--and we have them for every emotion--that stand in the way of us truly feeling happy and the result is that we dilute the emotion with food.

A progressive approach to losing weight involves asking questions "What is missing here? Why are people not getting the results they are promised? It is clearly ridiculous to keep using the same techniques when the results are so poor. It's more important to learn to experience emotions and conquer emotional eating than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person. If you're a mother, you'll be a better mother--an accountant, a better accountant. Stopping emotional over eating empowers you in all aspects of your life and is how you really lose weight or make weight loss easy.