Are You an Emotional Eater?
All this week in the Mail, AMELIA FREER — nutritionist to the stars and author of bestseller Eat. Nourish. Glow. — shows how to change the way you eat for good. Today, how to achieve grace around food…
Many of my clients appear to glide effortlessly through life looking glamorous and in control. Some run successful businesses or hold down important jobs.
They juggle the demands of raising children and marriage with running a home and a great social life. Many of them know about nutrition and eat healthily. But when I dig a little deeper I often find hidden dietary secrets.
Quite often they will confess that after a long day being calm and in complete control of their busy, successful lives they collapse on the sofa and gorge on chocolate until their stomach aches.
Food has so much control over our lives and, if we’re honest, most of us will admit to having used food at some point in an emotional way. We eat to distract or alter the way we are feeling, to find pleasure, to avoid pain.
Some familiar unhealthy patterns of eating are habitual and deeply ingrained. The messages we were taught as children can play a huge part — being told to finish everything on our plates or being forced to eat food we don’t like hardly sets us up for a balanced and happy relationship with food.
Being given sweet treats or junk food as a reward or comfort add to the confusing messages many of us hold on to as adults.
It is quite astounding how many bright and busy people find themselves feeling utterly helpless around food at certain points in the day and eating without grace.
I come across so many different types of eaters with flawed relationships with food. The first key to finding grace around food is to identify your habits so, with my guidance, you can start to fix them.
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