Alternative strategies for different emotions: Say goodbye to emotional eating

Focusing on special emotions

Changing your unthinking thoughts and developing self-soothing habits are general strategies for combating emotional eating. Both are highly effective in reducing emotional eating, but neither works immediately. They require repetition to form a habit.

As you change your unthinking thoughts and learn self-soothing techniques, it's helpful to develop a plan to address the specific emotions that trigger your eating. After a week of tracking your emotional eating, you'll gain an understanding of which emotions are your triggers (check your answer to question five in your emotional eating summary). If you identify more than one triggering emotion, choose one as your target emotion first.

The next step in enhancing physical intelligence is to find effective ways to manage emotions without eating.

Depression

When you feel depressed, it's hard to find the motivation to do anything, which is why depressed people often spend too much time in bed or in front of the TV. To break this cycle, instead of wallowing in laziness when you're feeling down, try to force yourself to move. Go for a walk, go swimming, go to the gym. Even though you may not want to move, exercise can improve your mood and help break the cycle of lethargy.

You can also do something different to break the cycle. Don't watch the same depressing TV shows, read an interesting book, or go to a library, art gallery, or museum.

concern

Worry helps you prepare when something terrible is about to happen. But when you worry, you may feel restless, tense, or fearful. Instead of trying to reduce worry by eating, try relaxation techniques. In addition to using cognitive therapy to correct distorted thinking, you can train your body to produce less physiological stress response under stress. Breathing, muscle relaxation, and stretching exercises can all help calm your internal organs.

Breathing exercise: Inhale deeply, filling your lungs as much as you can, hold your breath for 3-5 seconds to feel the tension in your chest, then exhale slowly, feeling the relaxation that comes with the release of tension. Repeat several times.

Muscle relaxation: Begin with your right hand. Clench your fist and hold the tension for 5-10 seconds, then relax the muscles, feeling the difference between tension and relaxation for 15-20 seconds. Repeat, feeling the difference in muscle sensation after relaxation. Repeat this tension-hold-release-relaxation process for different parts of the body. Although it may take 20-30 minutes to complete all the muscle groups in the following list, you can shorten the time for muscle relaxation exercises if you are busy. The sequence of exercises is: Clench your right hand, clench your left hand, bend your right arm at the elbow to tighten your triceps, bend your left arm at the elbow to tighten your triceps, extend your right arm outward, extend your left arm outward, arch your shoulders forward, press your chin towards your chest, close your eyelids tightly, raise your eyebrows as much as possible, bend your back to expand your chest (skip this if you have back pain), hold onto a chair and stick out your buttocks, tighten your abdomen as much as possible, bend your legs so that your toes point towards your face, bend your legs so that your toes point towards the ground.

Stretching exercise: Stand with your arms extended upwards as far as possible, bending your knees forward and standing on your toes. Return to a normal standing position, separate your feet, extend one arm upwards, and slide the other arm down your leg. Finally, clasp your hands behind your back and stretch them backwards and downwards. Then relax.

angry

Others' views on "anger" are unfair. Anger can be a useful emotion if it brings about positive changes, but it can also be harmful. When you feel angry, it's especially important to check for distorted thinking. If your thinking is rational and not due to the abuse of condemnation or "should" statements, then calm down for a while to allow the physiological stress response to subside (breathing, relaxation, or stretching exercises can also help here). Then, go to the person who treated you unfairly and let them know, in an unambiguous but non-provocative way, how you expect them to treat you in the future.

trouble

Sometimes there are unavoidable, tedious tasks. It's not nitpicking, but there's simply no way to find ironing interesting. When faced with this (or any other) annoying task, the temptation to snack to break the monotony can be hard to resist. To reduce this temptation, try to move the tedious task to a time and place where food is scarce or difficult to obtain. For example, take the clothes you're ironing and your portable TV to the garage where food is harder to find. If you're a student facing tedious homework, it's better to do it in the library than at home with the refrigerator nearby.

Loneliness

Eating cannot replace love and companionship, but when you're lonely, eating seems better than doing nothing. Thanks to email, rapid messaging, and internet newsgroups, anyone, regardless of distance, social skills, or fear of rejection, can establish some form of connection with others on Earth. While dating online can be risky, joining newsgroups or chat rooms related to your interests is safe. Similarly, joining mutually beneficial groups or taking a course can provide social opportunities. Because building new relationships takes time, you can use your self-soothing techniques to help you get through those lonely times.

hapiness

If eating makes you feel even happier, then I don't want to lower your happiness level by reducing your calorie intake. You should celebrate your good mood in alternative ways that don't involve eating.

We're still happy without Ben and Jerry ice cream.

After completing the exercises in this chapter, you will understand how your emotions trigger eating and will have several strategies to deal with it by not eating. Knowing your emotional eating pattern is a crucial first step. Only by knowing this can you change your habits. But knowing alone is not enough. Time and effort are also needed to implement strategies for dealing with each emotion. Don't expect to do it perfectly every time. It's helpful to recognize that controlling emotional eating doesn't mean you have to give up your favorite foods that you use to reward yourself. In Chapter Six, you will see how you can continue eating these foods, but this time it's less about feeling better and more about enjoying them.