Are Your Eating-Habits Out of Control? Healing Emotional Eating Habits

How often do you eat for comfort or overindulge?

When you feel sad? After you had an altercation with your spouse? You have to be particularly careful; this tends to lead to food addiction remarkably quickly. After eating, you will feel worse than before. Please don’t try to numb your feelings with food; it never works. Realizing you just ate a box of cookies will also lead to resentment and anger. Taking a walk to clear your mind or simply having an open discussion will make more sense and does not harm your body.

When you feel stressed out? The junk we eat when we feel stressed out does pack a punch! Some of the foods we choose are often sugar, fat, and flour. Something that will help with stress situations is to say: STOP! Breathe for a couple of minutes and take a break from life. I used to give myself a time out. Taking a couple of minutes to yourself and listening to relaxing music can make you feel better. My number one tip on dealing with stress is cleaning. Start cleaning your house! You see, frustration and stress just seem to melt away. A nice cup of hot herbal tea and exercise is truly a healthy solution to managing stress.

When you go out for dinner with friends? The best approach is to take your time. Don’t try to eat everybody under the table; it’s not a smart idea trying to keep up with your husband or other people, period. Take your time with eating, put the fork and knife down once in a while and chew thoroughly. You already know this fact I’m about to tell you, but I will say it anyway, (just try to stop me!) So here it goes, eat slower so you can eat less! In other words, your brain needs about 20 minutes to register fullness and satisfaction. It’s not your brains fault that you can empty a box of cookies in as little as 5 minutes. If fattening and toxic foods are your choice of “drug”, at least eat slowly to consume less of it. On bad days, I could inhale a family-size bag of chips without thinking about the consequences (and the consequences always come, don’t they?).
However, eating steamed or raw means eating fewer calories and more nutrients because raw food takes a whole lot of time to chew. I’m not kidding, have you tried to take a bite of an apple and swallow it without chewing? Impossible! Fresh produce contains colon-friendly fiber and waste-clearing water for a remarkably low calories count, which our system loves.

When you’re bored? While watching TV? Ask yourself, is it hunger or is it a void you are trying to fill. Personally, I ate when I missed my father. My father was a hard worker, and he was rarely home. The memorable times we spent together were around food and food shopping. Is it surprising I turned to comfort foods when I miss my father? 
Eating should be done consciously and never while doing something else. Boredom is a significant problem in western countries; people have too much time on their hands. Get a hobby, go work out, read one of my e-Books, paint or bake with the kids (gluten-free of course). Just don’t sit down and eat while watching some depressing talk show. Watching negative TV can make you depressed and eat more! Who do you think came up with this money-making idea? You guessed it, the food industry!

When you feel lazy and dispirited? It’s a misconception to think that a chocolate will make you alert or give you energy; in fact, the high sugar content of chocolate will send you on a blood sugar rollercoaster. It’s a never ending circle of sugar-highs and lows, which isn’t beneficial if you want to lose weight. Stabilizing your blood sugar needs to be your main goal. Whole foods and the correct combination of them will give you perfect blood sugar levels for energy and weight loss. 

Would you like to break the habit of overeating? What a question, of course you do! I'm proof that it can be done. I lived through it, and I ate through it!

How do we overcome overeating?

You know I can't speak for everybody, and I sure can't tell you which steps are right for you. However, I can tell you how I did it and how I overcame emotional eating and overeating.

I spent many hours by myself, crying, reading, listening to music, and just thinking. Reflecting on my past helped analyse the reasons for my overeating. Although I'm not going to bore you with my childhood, past,  and psychological babble, I will tell you that this step is essential for healing! 

For this purpose, I wrote down my feelings when I caught myself overeating. I made notes when I missed my dad and when I felt sad. This exercise will help pin point your reasons (triggers) for overindulging.  

Overeaters Anonymous states: The Statement on Abstinence and Recovery is “Abstinence is the action of refraining from compulsive eating and compulsive food behaviors while working towards or maintaining a healthy body weight.
I have to tell you, I call this statement BS! How do they expect overeaters to stop overeating if there's so much to deal with first. In other words, how can overeaters like us stop the behavior without having dealt with the reason for overeating first?

Once you figured out your trigger-emotions for eating/binging, you need to evaluate those feelings and try to solve them with help from family, friends or in my case books! You can find numerous eBooks on Amazon.com that can help you with your individual problem. Once you read the book that touches on your emotional self, you will know! It's like a lightbulb moment! This step took me many years, in the meantime, don't get discouraged and keep writing your feeling down.

During my process of emotional healing,  I kept my eating habit as nutritious as possible. For instance, how much physical damage can you possible inflict by binging on fruits, nuts and crispy salads? That's right! Even tough I wasn't willing to give up emotional eating, I was ready for a change! So my next tip for healing is; eat healthier! Munch on whole foods like fruits, nuts, seeds, raw chocolate sauce covered bananas, raw cookies and lots of fresh salads. 

Eventually, I broke my emotional overeating by taking control over food. Don't let food control you, you need to control food. In fact, there are many foods and food additives that prevent you from controlling food intake. One of these nasty suckers is MSG. Did you know that Food manufacturers and Fast Food joints put this chemical on everything!

Dr. Mercola wrote this about MSG on his blog. "Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.
MSG is one of the worst  food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and  much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

Dr. Mercola wrote this about MSG on his blog. "Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a flavor enhancer that’s known widely as an addition to Chinese food, but that’s actually added to thousands of the foods you and your family regularly eat, especially if you are like most Americans and eat the majority of your food as processed foods or in restaurants.
MSG is one of the worst  food additives on the market and is used in canned soups, crackers, meats, salad dressings, frozen dinners and  much more. It’s found in your local supermarket and restaurants, in your child’s school cafeteria and, amazingly, even in baby food and infant formula.

MSG is more than just a seasoning like salt and pepper, it actually enhances the flavor of foods, making processed meats and frozen dinners taste fresher and smell better, salad dressings more tasty, and canned foods less tinny.

As a result of eating MSG or Nitrates, but mostly MSG,  I get a extremely itchy nose, crave nasty junk food, can't fall asleep or have horrible nightmares. Read more about MSG on Dr. Mercola's blog, I find his advice on MSG truly enlightening. 

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Eventually, concentrate on cleaning your body of all the wast, toxins and chemicals you have accumulated over the years. Personally, I turned to Juice Fasting. Juice Fasting helped me take control over my eating habits and cleanse my body of addictive substances like food additives and chemicals. To find out about my 30 Day Juice Fast journey and everything that followed thereafter, read my story. 

Fasting has nothing to do with anorexia. Fasting is a spiritual journey! Fasting helps you to take control over your eating habits and floods your system with much needed hydration, life juices, vitamins, and minerals! I truly believe that fasting healed me from within. Once you see the before and after, you will agree. 

Following my cleanse I was ready to take on the world. I had super-charged energy, vitality and confidence. Most importantly, I felt content!

After your body rids itself of all the pus, congestion and toxins, it will ask to be "nourished" with real foods, whole foods. WARNING: You will crave Whole Foods!

Our system gets continually congested by sticky animal protein and waste materials while we overeat. As soon as we stop eating, the burden of incoming waste is relieved so cleansing can begin. (cue the zen bell here)

You will learn to say no! Saying no to your own body is hard but remember this: Even if cravings tell you that it would be terrific to have some pastry or chocolate, you have a brain to reason with yourself and deny the "request". Also, your taste buds will readjust during a fast. Salty foods will be unpalatable and you will sense chemicals on unwashed fruits and vegetables on the tip of your tongue. The best part is you'll be eating smaller portions after the fast. Your stomach is most likely stretched out from daily overeating, I know mine was. Fasting will shrink your stomach back to its original size. The stomach is like any other muscle. Muscles can and will tighten.

The only way fasting is dangerous or unhealthy is if you use fasting to lose weight only to gain it all back by binge-eating. Fasting should be used as a therapeutic solution for healing your body and your behavior. Use fasting as a detoxification and purification means so you can be on your way to a healthier lifestyle.

Remember to start with  1-Day Fasts, graduating to a 3-5 day fast and lastly venturing into a 7-14 day fast.
If you're overweight, you might consider fasting because an overweight body is an overtaxed body. Fasting is an excellent way to rid your body of excess waste and toxins. It's also the perfect solution to break a poor eating habit and start a new lifestyle. Fasting is YOUR reboot button. 

And lastly, fasting should never be considered a quick fix method to weight loss, but it can catapult you into the right direction of what is possible.

Hopefully my story can help you with healing your emotional overeating.

Do You have a question? Please don't hesitate to email me at [email protected]. If you liked this information, please share with your friends and help them out!


What are the Next Steps?

• Try to Heal Emotionally! 
  
• Ditch Chemicals like MSG, Nitrates, and Processed Foods
  
• Eat more Healing Whole Foods (delicious recipes on my Pinterest Board)
  
• Read my Juice Fasting book "Juice Fasting with the Juice Fasting Maven" for Juicing, Fasting and Healing Advise. Available very soon. Contact me to be notified when my book is released. Thank you
  
• or
  
• Start Cleansing!

COMING SOON

NOTIFY ME WHEN AVAILABLE!

Stay Healthy and Keep Juicing, You Deserve it!

Monika Baechler, Nutrition Specialist and Fasting Coach
Read my Personal Story here

To brows 5000+ Vegan Recipes, please visit my Pinterest Board

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