{"id":3489,"date":"2012-10-17T09:08:53","date_gmt":"2012-10-17T13:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/doinglifetogether\/?p=3489"},"modified":"2012-10-17T09:08:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-17T13:08:53","slug":"tips-to-break-emotional-eating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2012\/10\/tips-to-break-emotional-eating.html","title":{"rendered":"Tips to Break Emotional Eating"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.freedigitalphotos.net\/images\/agree-terms.php\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3491\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/258\/2012\/10\/LAdy-on-scale.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"266\" height=\"400\" \/><\/a>Last night, I did a live webinar on Food Addiction and emotional eating. So many of the call-in questions concerned what to do instead of reaching for food when emotionally upset. This is a great question because it has to do with breaking the habit of going to food for emotional reasons.<\/p>\n<p>In order to break that habit, you have to substitute another behavior for the food. This doesn&#8217;t mean that the substituted behavior will be as pleasurable as eating, as easy to do as eat, or as rewarding as food. But it does mean that if you can continue to substitute another behavior, or what I am calling use an an emotional rescue, \u00a0you will eventually break the habit of reaching for food to soothe yourself.<\/p>\n<p>Here are examples of emotional rescues. Your list should be tailored to you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Walk around a room&#8211;get up and move and distract yourself<\/li>\n<li>Talk to someone<\/li>\n<li>Play a CD and get lost in the music<\/li>\n<li>Write a To Do list<\/li>\n<li>Draw or paint<\/li>\n<li>Take a long relaxing bath<\/li>\n<li>Clean something<\/li>\n<li>Play with your pet<\/li>\n<li>Count to 10 and then backwards, deep breathe<\/li>\n<li>Pray<\/li>\n<li>Journal your thoughts<\/li>\n<li>Exercise&#8211;short walk, stretching, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>As you develop your list, come up with ideas you can do in the car, at the office and at your home. Look at the list when you want to eat and make yourself choose an emotional rescue. Over time, you can change your pattern of emotional eating.<\/div>\n<p>Another technique called the <strong>Graduated Approach<\/strong>, uses this idea with food. When you feel like you must have a trigger food, add a small helping of a fruit or vegetable to the trigger food. Do this every time you reach for the trigger food and add a little less of the trigger food, and more of the healthier option. Eventually, you will associate the healthy food with the reward feeling of the trigger food.<\/p>\n<p>Add these two tips to your plan to work on breaking free from emotional or compulsive eating. It can be done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night, I did a live webinar on Food Addiction and emotional eating. So many of the call-in questions concerned what to do instead of reaching for food when emotionally upset. This is a great question because it has to do with breaking the habit of going to food for emotional reasons. In order to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[918],"tags":[589,29,1035,1745,1744,430,632,82,30],"class_list":["post-3489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-relationship-to-food","tag-compulsive-eating","tag-dieting","tag-emotional-eating","tag-emotional-rescues","tag-graduated-eating","tag-obesity","tag-overeating","tag-weight","tag-weight-loss"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tips to Break Emotional Eating<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/2012\/10\/tips-to-break-emotional-eating.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tips to Break Emotional Eating\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last night, I did a live webinar on Food Addiction and emotional eating. 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Dr. Linda\u2019s fun personality and expertise comes through whether she\u2019s helping her audience stress less or make peace with their thighs! Dr. Linda has her Ph.D. in Urban Health and Clinical Psychology and is a national expert on mental health. She has specialized in the treatment of eating disorders, anxiety, depression and pain management. With 30 years of clinical experience working with couples, families and individuals, she brings her common-sense approach to people who want to live in positive mental health. Dr. Linda is also a bestselling author with 21 book titles to her credit, a radio host of the Dr. Linda Mintle show, professor, national speaker, winner of the Mom\u2019s Choice Award, a national news consultant, featured writer for Beliefnet and hosts her own website. Her academic appointments keep her abreast of current research in her areas of expertise. Her media experience includes seven years as the resident expert for ABC Family\u2019s Living the Life television show and regular appearances on network television and radio. It is often said that being with Dr. Linda is like having coffee with a friend. She makes the complicated issues of relationships and mental health easy to understand and applicable to everyday living. The ease she has with people, coupled with her clinical training and experience makes her a sought-after speaker on college campuses, conferences and special events. Whether she is doing a TV skit with Tim Conway or discussing teen violence with Queen Latifa, Dr. Linda will entertain, educate and integrate faith and mental health in everyday living. Check out her latest book Hope and Healing for Anxiety, a whole-person approach to eliminate anxiety. .","sameAs":["https:\/\/drlindamintle.com\/","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/drlindamintle\/","https:\/\/x.com\/drlindamintle"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/author\/lmintle"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/419"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3489"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3495,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3489\/revisions\/3495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/doinglifetogether\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}