Anxiety and food

In this text I would like to share a reflection about hunger and food, since it is something that I find as a wellness coach very regularly.

On this journey of accompanying and helping people from all over the world to control their weight and diet, I always run into the same challenge …. “I want to control hunger” or “I am not able to control my desire to eat”.

If we look for and internalize what hunger really means, we can say that it is a shortage of food or a need to feed yourself, and that with a specific amount of nutrients and vitamins you achieve that goal.

Under this understanding, what you feel when you feel like eating is not hunger, so what is it? What really do you need to control? Do we associate hunger with what?

The famous desire to eat or cravings, are something very common in human beings and what it is about doing with this is to fill some emotion or thought that we are not being able to fill.

It can be related to the loss of someone or something, with boredom and lack of motivation, with grief and sadness or because it is the only way you know of to de-stress.

Whatever the reason, the first thing you need to break this habit is to be aware of why you eat and what that means and to become aware that eating is to feed the physical body and not the emotional body.

Anxiety is totally related to not being living in the present moment. If we are in the past, we are anxious and we can begin to overeat or take other escape mechanisms. The same happens when we are worried about the future, because the craving for the unknown usually wins, generating disagreement and the desire to fill that void or those desire to eat with something quick, which in this case is sweets or piecemeal.

There is an exercise that has really helped the many clients with whom I have worked with, it is a way to treat bad habits with love, understanding and understanding.

Try to be very aware at the moment when you are going to start eating more than you should and grab your notebook and write …

How do I feel right now?

What do I need right now? What other way do I have to fulfill this need?

What is the use of doing it differently?

Who will I be when I can do it differently?

These questions help us incredibly because they point to seeing the problem at the root and giving us time to think about what we are doing. Writing and focusing when we are in a moment of lack of control is the key to start living fully and consciously.

The understanding of why we act towards food as a filler of emotions and not what it really serves to eat and nourish ourselves, opens the doors not only to a healthy and balanced body, but also to a clear mind that controls itself. she herself.

Some tips that will help us differentiate between emotional hunger and physical hunger are the following:

Physical Hunger:

It manifests little by little

Calms down by feeding on a variety of foods

Disappears after eating

Food with awareness

Emotional Hunger:

Appears suddenly

There are cravings for sweets or specific things

Insatiable

You eat without awareness of what you are doing

Food is made to nourish the physical body, not the emotional or the mental.

Now that you are clear about the differences and the reason why you choose this mechanism

What are you gonna do about it?