Did you also come to you eating without hunger, just because you try to reduce anxiety with food?
Anxiety can come for many reasons: stress, exhaustion, pressure, the problems you have to deal with, the lack of support, fear, insecurity …
On the other hand, when we are hungry and eat, we managed to calm our appetite and get a sense of calm and satisfaction.
Often, looking for the same sense of pleasure and well-being that we felt when we eat, we can use food, to calm our feelings of anxiety or distress.
Fritz Perls, in his book, Ego, hunger and aggression, highlights the importance of digest what we received. That is, all ideas from other people, and that are related to our personality or way of being.
Sometimes we say things that hurt us, but instead of defending ourselves or take any decision, we “swallow” and that causes us indigestion.
We have many mandates as:
- we must not answer badly
- We have to be polite
- older is right
- does not contradict your parents
- it is better to remain silent and not give your opinion if it is contrary to the rest
- etc
So when a problem, influenced by all these beliefs arises, we are unable to express what they really think or feel.
Because we have said that’s wrong.
So let gulping and gulping … everything that we do not like, that bothers us or bother us.
Eating without hunger
This inability to express as you like, to be able to be yourself, makes internally, you feel bad.
You start to get the feeling of discomfort, vacuum, but rather to analyze and decide what you are going through, looking for a way to cover that feeling.
You take the wrong path, and you go to the fridge.
Sometimes you have trouble deciding what to eat because, really, you are not hungry, it’s just discomfort or an uncomfortable feeling.
So, depending on your preferences,
you go for something sweet or savory.
When you’re full, your sense of emptiness or discomfort disappears, at least for the moment, and it seems that you feel better.
You managed to reduce your anxiety eating, and short-term, has been a success.
So, after a few hours, the next day or the next time you feel bad again, as eating has calmed you once, why would not he do it again?
Over time, the habit is established
A solution that “covers” short-term pain, if repeated over time, will be established as a habit.
If you have a leg injury and you take a pill so you do not hurt when the effect of the pill is over, the pain will return.
For you are acting on the symptom, not the cause.
If you have a problem of any kind and, rather than fix it or face it, you get to eat to reduce your anxiety, when your stomach starts to be empty, return anxiety.
Eating is not a solution.
And that now you know.
The problem is: How do you stop eating when you feel bad?
Well, I try to give you some alternatives to food, to see if, between the two, we can get it.
When you feel anxiety or distress, and you feel tempted to eat without hunger, before going to the fridge:
1. Make a breath and ask yourself:
- How do I feel?
- Is there currently a problem occupying my mind?
It is important to identify your feelings and what is what generates them.
2. Allow whatever feeling arises you: the problem of “uncomfortable” feelings is that we do not want to feel, and do anything to avoid them. Eating is one of them.
3. The next question is: Can I do something about it?:
- Sometimes no, you can not do anything to change the situation, so you have no other than feeling what you feel and accept what is. There’s no more.
- If you can do something to change the situation gets a paper and write down 3 things you could do. And, immediately, make the smallest of the three.
That will help you commit yourself and keep doing whatever is in your hands, to change what you can.
4. Change the habit of eating and do something different: when you go to the refrigerator or the kitchen looking for “something to eat”, you have to do something different.
It is important to break the habit of “feel anguish” –> eat.
It can be anything: going for a walk, call someone, make a drawing, stick a shower, get to sing or dance or anything you can think of, that is not eating.
If even so, you end up going to the fridge, very important:
Do not blame yourself.
It is ok.
At least you tried.
You can, also, do the steps I tell you (even if you have a full stomach).
And try to extend as long as possible, between the time you feel anxiety and eat to calm her with anything of which I’ll explain in point 4.
Habits, as you know, are not easy to break.
And, if we have long been making.
Experts say required 21 days doing something different so that an action is put in place as a habit.
So, if you want to stop eating without hunger, you have to do something different for the next 21 days.
If you can understand that eating is like the pain pill, but will not cure your wound, because you have to wash and sanitize to heal it, then, it will be easier to deal with the problem and do not eat it.
Do not get bogged down, do the best you can and know.
And, if you need help, look at my psychotherapy and coaching services.
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