the truth about comfort eating
DESCRIPTION
Comfort eating is a common problem when it comes to weight loss. Understanding what it is and isn’t often gives us control over our behaviour regarding food.TRANSCRIPT
Comfort eating is cited as being an issue
lying behind somebody’s weight problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Our childhood experiences and things
that happened in the past can also
have an effect on the way we view
food and the way it makes us feel.
Often, this is one of the things that will
be explored in a hypnotherapy
session for weight loss.
Eating is an obvious
pleasure for children
and parents often
use it as a tool to
help their children
learn.
This combination of giving food as well
as comfort can continue long past
infancy, and a parent can give a hurt or
sad child food (which usually tends to
be sweet – I’ve never heard of a parent
giving a crying child cheese) along with
the cuddle to “cheer you up and make
you feel better”.
This behaviour may linger when we are
adults, and we may seek out sweets as
a comfort if we can’t get the cuddles.
Learn more about the downside of
comfort eating at
http://positivetranceformations.com.au