After receiving last month’s newsletter, a friend remarked that he knows his weight loss problem is portion control. In my opinion, portion control is a symptom. What’s important is to figure out why your body wants to overeat. I believe there are three reasons that we over eat: addiction, lack of nutrition, or emotional eating.
I’ve written before about food addiction. Click here to read more. I have watched several clients go through the process of trying to let go of their wheat and sugar addictions. I can tell you from personal experience it is not easy. But I found, and they found, that after a week or so without those addictive foods we began to feel better, a lot better, and to see that it is in fact possible to live without bread. And pasta. And soda. Possible to live and even thrive without them.
I talked last month about how if we don’t feed our bodies what they need, they will keep asking for it until they get it. If we never get proper nutrition, we end up with baffling cravings, and in our efforts to appease the cravings we get fat.
Emotional eating is when we look to food to give us things we should be getting from other sources. Of course, all three of these overlap. In my coaching programs we work through the circular relationship between eating right, mood, lifestyle choices, setting priorities, and living joyfully. We want to understand when we need more healthy fats, and when instead of ice cream we need a hug, or to watch a sunset. A lovely quote I read recently said, “When we fail to assimilate the beauty that the world is giving us we get hungry for all the wrong things. Beauty is a food...Start eating.”
In my experience, a balance is required. I need a supportive diet, that gives my body the chance to function properly and produce the right chemicals for feeling good. And I need a life that gives me enough sleep, stress reduction, joy and love.
I’ve written before about food addiction. Click here to read more. I have watched several clients go through the process of trying to let go of their wheat and sugar addictions. I can tell you from personal experience it is not easy. But I found, and they found, that after a week or so without those addictive foods we began to feel better, a lot better, and to see that it is in fact possible to live without bread. And pasta. And soda. Possible to live and even thrive without them.
I talked last month about how if we don’t feed our bodies what they need, they will keep asking for it until they get it. If we never get proper nutrition, we end up with baffling cravings, and in our efforts to appease the cravings we get fat.
Emotional eating is when we look to food to give us things we should be getting from other sources. Of course, all three of these overlap. In my coaching programs we work through the circular relationship between eating right, mood, lifestyle choices, setting priorities, and living joyfully. We want to understand when we need more healthy fats, and when instead of ice cream we need a hug, or to watch a sunset. A lovely quote I read recently said, “When we fail to assimilate the beauty that the world is giving us we get hungry for all the wrong things. Beauty is a food...Start eating.”
In my experience, a balance is required. I need a supportive diet, that gives my body the chance to function properly and produce the right chemicals for feeling good. And I need a life that gives me enough sleep, stress reduction, joy and love.
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