by DemoSportFitness

Created on: December 13, 2009   Last Updated: December 14, 2009

To get your weight issues under control, you need to determine what's holding you back. If it's emotional eating, once you realize it, there are things that you can do to overcome it. Here are some things to consider if you think that you are an emotional eater:

-Are you in control?

Emotions can trigger many results, but if you are eating out of control, this is a huge detriment to your weight loss efforts, and your health. You should be eating 5-6 small meals per day, within certain caloric guidelines. When you are out of control even after you have calculated your calorie expenditures for the day, and you don't have the extra activity to account for each calorie you take in, then you are eating while out of control. By maintaining your daily calories with your set meals is how to maintain control, and loss weight.

-Do you go overboard with quantities of food?

If you are eating way above your portion sizes, there must be a reason for this. Take notice for each time that this happens, because you can learn how to change your patterns to deal with emotional eating. Once you figure out what is happening with you emotionally, you can gain better control over your food intake. There is most likely something associated with going overboard on certain foods, and it's not always about hunger, and enjoyment of the food itself.

-Sadness, boredom, and joy can all lead to being an emotional eater.

These are the BIG THREE. When we lose control, and go overboard it's most likely associated with either sadness, boredom, or joy. I find that most of my overweight clients use food to deal with all three of these emotions. It's really tough, because when they are down, bored, or excited about something, they use food as a way to sulk or to celebrate. What is so bad about this? Well, I've mentioned being out of control, and going overboard first, for a reason.

When we eat emotionally, everything about control goes out the window, and overboard takes control. This is so bad for us, because whenever emotions take over, we don't think anymore about calories, what we are eating, or what foods are good for our health. Emotional eating leads us to eat things that are the JUNK foods, and we go for large quantities of these foods, till essentially it becomes binge eating. Part of losing weight is having good eating habits, and having control, so that we make the choices, instead of our emotions doing it for us.

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