Do you have difficulty dealing with the urge to eat when you aren’t hungry?
Are you in the habit of using food as a pacifier when you aren’t hungry?
Do you think the feeling of food in your mouth is comforting?
Do you like to snack while watching TV after dinner?
There’s no problem with food being comforting. The problem is eating when you aren’t hungry.
When you eat when you aren’t hungry, your body stores that energy as fat. That’s how you gain weight.
How attached are you to your comfort eating habit?
Does the thought of not mindlessly munching after work or after dinner disturb you? Make you feel uneasy?
Learn why consistently eating in response to this urge isn’t really a reward for working hard all day or having to deal with the kids. It isn’t a good choice for self-care either.
Listen to learn what these urges really are and what you can do to deal with them in a way that is healthy and will help you lose weight and keep it off.
Oh God… the peanut butter cup stash! Shari, this is SO on point. The self-medicating/soothing/care-giving of an oral fixation. Gave up smoking in ’83, never drank to get drunk, and grass and I just do NOT hitch horses… so yeah. Food. But you’re so right about the pattern/habit of just stuffing one’s face without thinking – and how utterly appalling it was at first to think about giving that up! The Food Log was such a powerful tool, as was the “terrible and tedious” work sheet.
And unlike smoking, it’s so easy to backslide with food – that insidious little bite here, the thoughtless Triscuit or two there. And those peanut butter cups. Y’know, I’m fairly sure that it was chocolate that darned serpent offered Eve…
Thanks Shari for your ongoing insights and wisdom. I am still trying to really take it all on board.