Friday, March 07, 2008

Eating, eating, eating.

So yesterday I went to meeting about Emotional Eating and it was pretty interesting stuff. Some things I knew already and some I did not. Emotional eating is a way of dealing with things. One doesn't know how to handle or deal with stressors in life and they feel comfort or satisfaction from eating. This can be replaced with other things drugs or alcohol or other addictive behaviors.

Emotional eating comes from many aspects of life culture, family, traditions and society. I know I've talked about it before but what things that affected me was having to empty my plate growing up. So even if I was full I didn't know it or through having to clean my plate didn't know when I was full. So that is something I'm still dealing with.

So in order to overcome the issues one has to do counseling. I wonder about self counseling, could I do it on my own. Face my own issues and deal with them on my own. It's all about being aware. Learning to stop myself and ask myself if I'm hungry or not. One way to do this is by tracking what I eat in a little book/journal and also writing what I'm feeling when I'm eating. It could be I'm bored, just want to eat, I'm hungry or I'm upset or happy.

So while I know that I have to face some issues, it's finding ways to deal with it, overcome and persevere.

There are different eating disorders, Anorexia and Bulimia which are issues that deal with body image and then there is BED (binge eating disorder) which I don't think I have. Other issues are disordered eating which are overeating, addictive eating and other issues with food that aren't associate with body image. One has to be careful because if you don't find positive cooping mechanisms to deal with the issues you could replace food addiction with other addictions. Which in my eyes would not be good. So I have a lot of work ahead of me.

If the issues aren't dealt with then you won't succeed in the long run. So good luck to anyone on this venture, I know I'll need the luck or positive vibes.

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