Comfort Eating – What It Is And Isn’t
One thing you often become aware of in the field of hypnotherapy is that there is a strong link between the emotions and the way we eat.
In fact, one of the areas that hypnosis is often used for is in the area of weight loss.
Often, comfort eating is cited as being an issue lying behind somebody’s weight problem.
The link between feeling good and the food we eat is undeniable. It’s just part of being human.
However, it’s important to be aware as to exactly what comfort eating is and what it isn’t.
If comfort eating is a problem for you, then being aware of what’s going on will help you have power over it and feel more in control.
Knowing what comfort eating isn’t can also be helpful.
Factor one: good times and abundance
Having an abundance of food was a reason to celebrate and be happy.
On the other hand, a big life event such as a birth, a marriage or even a death, was celebrated or commemorated by lavish amounts of food.
Now, it’s not comfort eating to enjoy eating a bit of birthday cake at your friend’s party, even though eating the cake will be associated with feeling happy and will be part of the general fun of the celebration.
The problem here comes when you try to capture the feeling associated with a party by eating party food even when you’re not celebrating anything – that is
comfort eating.
Factor two: blood sugar
There is also a physical side to the link between food and emotions.
When we are low on blood sugar and hungry, we tend to feel pretty terrible.
It varies from person to person, but when we haven’t eaten for a while, we get grumpy, snappy, more prone to worry, a bit more emotional and prone to tearfulness and so forth.
Any mother of small children – in fact, any parent at all – can tell you that the time of day that’s the worst is the hour just before the evening meal.
All that irritability is simply a sign that your body needs some fuel, while some of the worry that kicks in may be, deep down, part of a fear that there will not be enough to eat.
This emotional factor should drive us to grab something to eat – it’s like the fuel light coming on in the car to show that we’re low on fuel.
Where comfort eating comes in is when we use food as a way to help us feel better when we feel tired, irritable, stressed or upset for some other reason, i.e. when hunger isn’t the cause of our bad temper and anxiety.
The classic example here is the stereotype of a woman who has been dumped by her lover and who turns to ice cream and chocolate as a consolation – eating her heart out. Men do it too, of course!
If you think you like comfort eating, well, stop it now with the help of a Hypnotherapist Gold Coast.
More information at http://positivetranceformations.com.au