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May 24, 2023 · It's common to turn to food for comfort. Food can fill an emotional void, be a coping mechanism, and offer social support. In addition to preventing serious health issues and improving day-to-day lives, managing stress levels can nip those cravings in the bud and allow us to make better food choices.
- Start an emotion diary. The more you understand your habits, the better. Eating in response to emotion can happen automatically. The more you understand how you feel when you do certain things, the better your chance at changing things.
- Find other ways to cope. Once you have more information about the emotions, situations, or thoughts that can trigger eating, you can start to make changes.
- Move your body. Moving your body can be a powerful way to manage stress and anxiety. Activity helps to reduce levels of stress hormones in your body. It also releases endorphins to give your mood a boost.
- Try mindfulness. Mindfulness has many benefits for mental health. It’s shown to be a powerful way to manage anxiety and depression. It has also been shown to reduce stress eating.
- Feel good. Eating food high in fat, sugar or salt activates the brain’s reward system. For example, chocolate has a strong effect on mood, generally increasing pleasant feelings and reducing tension.
- Self-medication. There seems to be a consistent connection between negative emotions and unhealthy foods, a phenomenon called emotional eating. In a bad mood, people are drawn to unhealthy foods (sugary and fatty) as a coping mechanism.
- The need to belong. We tend to associate certain foods with members of our family, social gatherings, and people taking care of us, such as Thanksgiving holidays with family.
- Nostalgic eating. There is a strong link between scents and emotional memory. The smell of foods can evoke vivid and detailed emotional memories of our past (Reid, et al., 2014).
By applying mindfulness to comfort eating, we can become more conscious of the foods we’re craving by directing our attention fully onto them as if for the first time, and separating them from the internal projections we’ve placed upon them.
1. Eat Enough Calories. 2. Avoid Restrictive Diets. 3. Don’t Let Yourself Get Too Hungry. 4. Eat Filling, Nutrient-Dense Foods. 5. Allow Yourself to Enjoy Your Favorite Foods. 6. Eat to Manage Your Blood Sugar. 7. Manage Stress. 8. Get Enough Sleep. 9. Reduce Refined Carbs. Learn More About Healthy Nutrition with Signos’ Expert Advice.
Sep 28, 2024 · 1. Identify the trigger. First things first: Notice what triggers you. Usually, in the case of food cravings, triggers are tied to emotions. "It's 3 p.m., and I'm stressed," Brewer offers. (Stress would be the trigger in this example.) It's why we even have the term comfort food. "Our brains are saying, 'Hey, something in my life is unpleasant.
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Jan 12, 2024 · Stress. Sleep deprivation. Boredom. Low blood sugar. By putting some simple strategies into place, you can, therefore, prevent these things from happening and tackle cravings at their root cause. Astrid Brojanowska. Psychologist.
