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To conquer emotional eating it's first important to manage one's thinking and self communication. Otherwise, one's efforts will be in vain. We could begin with managing emotions and invest years of training in how to embrace emotions and experience them to leave overeating out of the picture. However, if one is an expert at managing emotions, little progress might be made in losing weight if one still has a "fat thinking frame of mind." For instance, if one recognizes the emotion of boredom and the desire to snack because of the boredom that in itself is progress. Yet, to leave food out of the picture, there's a mental command issued. And the nature of that command determines whether the managing of the boredom is successful or unsuccessful. The command is in the form of self communication such as, "I don't want to eat (something). Unfortunately, this particular command is actually a suggestion to focus on food for two different reasons: First, the brain skips "nots." It's like commanding a printer to NOT print--it's going to print. Second, it's like telling the child within you that it can't have something. It creates a parent child war and when food is involved, the child wins. Any command such as, "I don't want to think about food," or "I don't crave sweets anymore," only cause one to focus on food either at that moment or hours or days later. "Gee I haven't been thinking much about desert for weeks and all of a sudden, that's all I can think about." The thought becomes a boomerang. Of course there are lots of other command or self communication statements that contribute to failure such as: "I want to lose weight or quit eating so much." The words "lose" and "quit" are a problem. As youngsters we're taught that losing and quitting are not admirable traits. Or if you lose something you want to find it. So someone says, "Looks like you lost some weight." And what do you have to do--go find it, right? Or the idea of "giving up" or "doing without" likewise is a problem because once again "giving up" is not admirable and "doing without," is like being made to go to bed without dinner. "I'll eat today and diet tomorrow." The word "diet" is "die" with a "t" on the end and for most people means "doing without" and "giving up." Plus if you think of "dieting tomorrow," what do you do today? Eat everything in sight, right? "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." A horse is a pretty big item. Plus for many reasons the word "hungry" is misused. "I can't stand myself any more." This one destroys self esteem and actually contributes to eating more--like self punishment. The idea of forgetting about food along with some other specific can be far more effective at enforcing one's ability to stop eating emotional stress and leave food out of the picture than any of the above. A progressive approach to conquer emotional eating habit involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting and thinking the same non productive thoughts when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop emotional eating--eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating with effective self communication empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're an assembly line worker, you'll be a better assembly line worker; a mother, a better mother... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible. Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E., NGH certified, a prominent figure in the field of hypnosis with his best selling hypnosis and stress management cds at http://www.DStressDoc.com and http://www.PanicBusters.com. His aim is to make it possible for anyone to manage emotional binge eating. For more information please visit http://www.dstressdoc.com/BingeEatingEbook.htm
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