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Skin Care Tips

Skin Care

You Can Conquer Emotional Eating

Do you crave chocolate when you're feeling stressed? Do you find yourself finishing a bag of potato chips when you're bored or lonely? When you're sad, do you sit down with a carton of ice cream and a spoon? These are common examples of emotional eating, or turning to food to address emotions. Emotional eating can cause overeating and poor food choices, which can lead to being overweight or obese. The good news is you can overcome emotional eating.

3 Steps to Overcoming Emotional Eating

Identify the problem. Specifically, it helps to understand which emotions are most likely to trigger a craving for food. Keep track of what you eat and how you're feeling when you eat in a food journal and you may be able to recognize a pattern fairly quickly.
Eliminate temptation. Most emotional eaters have favorite foods that they turn to. Identify your comfort foods and keep them out of your house and workplace so you'll be less likely to give in to temptation.
Do something else. This sounds simple, but it's really the key to conquering emotional eating. Once you've identified that you handle a specific emotion with food, the next step is to use another coping technique to handle that emotion so that you won't eat. Keep your hands and mind busy by going for a walk, cleaning the house, or picking up the phone to call a friend.

Remember that your emotional eating habit didn't develop overnight. It may take practice for you to recognize and change your behaviors, and you may experience setbacks along the way. With patience and perseverance, however, you can conquer emotional eating.