Everyday Systems

Successful weight loss distinguishes hunger from other feelings...

This article appears in today's issue of USA Today. It is a very in depth article that basically states that "overearing is fueled by a wide range of turbulent emotions"

It goes on to espouse how emotions lead to overeating and grazing and how recognizing the emtional triggers that cause overeating will lead to weight loss. Very interesting but...

Three plates of food a day, no snacks, no seconds no sweets EXCEPT on days that begin with "S" took all of the mumbo-jumbo out of how to stop emotional eating for me... thanks Mr. Reinhard for making this so plain and simple!

Jessies Daughter,

No S has given me the structure to clearly identify when I actually HAVE emotional hunger vs. Physical hunger on a regular basis.

As an emotional eater this has been HUGELY helpful. Until NO S I was incapable of really putting the knowledge of emotional eating to any practical or consistent use.

IT is helpful for me to recognize that almost all of my "hunger" between meals is emotional. SO the concept of "emotional hunger" works hand in glove for me with No S in that No S definitely helps to keep those boundaries clear,

would love to read the article, do you have a link?

Blueskighs

Here's the link

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/wei ... enge_N.htm


Have a great day!

noSer,

thanks for the link!

Blueskighs

Hate to be a downer, but I still find that my tendency to eat for emotional reasons makes no S hard. Sure, the rules are clear, but those old habits, so old they're almost writteen in every cell of my body, that food=comfort, still often win out. On a really "bad" day, emotional eating is soooooo hard to avoid.

I think I agree with you Betty. I think with noS I am definitely getting better in recognizing emotional eating, but recognizing it is often not enough to stop me. Especially on Sdays...

But I like the quote from the article:

Don't try harder, try different.

It is hard to hold back when you're really emotional. This morning and last night I was really upset. My fiance asked me last night, as he was having some sherbert, if I would like some . . I said "No, getting fatter will make me sadder." He laughed caused it rhymed.

This morning, still upset, I had a tiny danish.

I think the trick is, I'm not going to go crazy this time around. It's DIFFICULT, but I'm finding different ways to deal. I took out a post-it and wrote my troubles down and I'll paste it in my diary when I get home. I talked to my fiance/emailed. Took deep breaths.

So while I failed a bit, I'm glad that I'm telling myself that it will only make things WORSE if I bought those chocolate cupcakes from the vending machine. And I think this is as hard as any other habit to break and we're never fully cured of it, as with all bad habits.

it is hard to not give in to emotional hunger. Part of No S is optimizing our will power. For me when I want to eat emotionally that is when I must put my will power to good use and just, yes, force myself to do something else, anything else until my next meal.

Emotional hunger is "real" and the only thing that has helped is just not doing it.

I do mention sometimes a program I did Shrink yourself a few months before NO S. It is all about emotional eating and was actually pretty tough. I often wonder if the changes I made doing that program have actually helped me with No S.

I don't know. But in the end I think

Don't try harder, try different.

is a great approach and at certain points will require all of your willpower at your disposal to execute,

Blueskighs

It's DIFFICULT, but I'm finding different ways to deal

Maybe this is the key thing - to acknowledge it is difficult!

I think in some ways it gives me the energy to deal with it. In the past, I would often say to myself, I won't eat when I'm not hungry=I won't eat because I am stressed/sad/tired. Easy enough, this way I should definitely be able to lose weight. But it is not easy! It's not that after this decision, I wouldn't experience emotional hunger.

But now I know it might be a problem for me and I feel a bit more prepared to tackle it. Because I know it is difficult, I have accepted the fact that I might need to put more energy to overcome it. I realized that I shouldn't expect myself just to "deal with it", that I should help myself to deal with it instead!