Do you have an unhealthy relationship with food and find that you are eating for emotional reasons? This ‘abuse’ of food can exacerbate negative emotions like guilt, shame, insecurity, loneliness and sadness.
Ultimately, your relationship with food is about your relationship with yourself, and hypnotherapy can be a useful way of addressing this.
What is Comfort Eating?
Before we start do u know what is comfort eating or comfort food? To simplify it does not means that burgers or any other food is comforting. It is more of an controlling emotional attachment and many people eagerly reach out for muffins or cookies when they are stressed.
Most people have a habit of overeating and I don’t mean on Christmas. During anger, frustration, depression, hundreds of people reach out to their food and eat in reply to their feelings instead of eating to their appetite.
Once they build this habit, it becomes difficult to feel what hunger feels like.
Why do we do it?
Well, every time you eat when not hungry or don’t need to refuel. Then there might be some reasons like:
- Eating for social reasons such as it’s mannerly to eat. They expect us to eat.
- We may eat habitually. We love having popcorns or chips every time we watch our favourite movie or show.
- We eat inedible food when dealing with unpleasant situations, also stated as comfort eating.
- One way or another all these patterns are linked to each other.
- Comfort eating is not like other eating disorders. But for many people, comfort eating can cause serious issues.
How to treat or stop comfort eating
Right now some you might be thinking, What can I do about it? The good news here are some tips that you will find helpful when dealing with comfort eating:
Mindfulness
The ideal way to overcome our mind is to exercise mindfulness. When going through the stress, it is best to calm down and take a deep breath. This process will reset your nervous systems and help you to focus on making the right decisions.
Don't be in tempting situations
Studies have proven that whenever we are going through stress we don’t eat healthy or simple food. Instead, we rush to un-healthy or junk foods to soothe ourselves. Another thing that we can do to fight against our urge to eat unhealthy food is to eliminate temptation. Don’t keep junk food in your kitchen. You will look for junk food in tough situations, so why put yourself in the situation to get spoiled?
Make an intentional decision
If you are eating junk food in limit and after thinking about it, it’s natural. You can eat anything that makes you feel good.
It can be a problem if this turns into a weeklong food spree that makes you feel not good about yourself.
Always ask these questions to yourself before diving in a cake:
Do I really need to eat this?
Will I feel guilty after eating?
Try other options
Your best tool to overcome this Comfort Eating disorder can be some other healthy activities that will make you feel good without any eating.
There are activities such as meditation, workouts, mindfulness and romance that have a similar impact on your mind that junk food or overeating have.
All these things will help you manage difficult situations more efficiently.
When to seek professional help
If you already tried these options but still the problem persists, think about seeking help from a mental health professional.
You can seek the help of any hypnotherapist to understand why you eat too much during tough situations and it can be treated.
Benefits of Hypnotherapy
Hypnosis is a natural state of selective, focused attention, and, even though it is 100% natural and normal, it remains one of the most fascinating phenomena of the human mind. Our ability to enter this unique state of consciousness opens the door to countless possibilities for healing, self-exploration and change.
- Support kicking bad habits and behaviours
- Rapidly reduce stress
- Promotes healthy sleep
- Treat anxiety and depression
Why Choose Chris Hughes Hypnotherapy?
Chris Hughes has over 10 years practicing as a clinical hypnotherapist providing hypnosis based treatment in London and Oxfordshire. Chris is validated by the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council. This council assess the training of all their members to ensure they have the correct training. Chris is also a senior member of the General Hypnotherapy Register which is currently the largest professional registering organisation for practicing hypnotherapists in the UK.