Whenever we feel hungry, is it due to a physiological need to feed ourselves? Of course not. There is also the emotional hungerthat voracious or distracted appetite that drives us to empty the fridge when what happens to us is that we feel anxious, empty, bored…
Right now we can break old harmful connections and create new, healthier links with our bodies and with food. We just need some resources.
The conduct of eating is not just eating food: is the result of a complex relationship of previous family experiences and their evocations; eating routines, cultural values, attitudes and beliefs, the context in which we eat, personal emotions, needs… That is, we eat for many reasonsand rarely is it because of feeling hungry.
Throughout our lives, the brain is recording all this information, building connections and generating automatisms. All of these factors can create a dysfunctional relationship with food that it is advisable to break as soon as possible.
How to learn to eat well
if we want to eat well, we must train our brain to choose the right options and that requires perseverance and time. It also means understanding how important what we eat is, how and when we do it.
Having a greater self-knowledge of the psychological, emotional and behavioral processes that affect our way of eating will help us to implement and cultivate healthier eating habits. Where to start?
The first thing to do is banish the idea of eating as a struggle, a battle, to see who can: if the food and the kilos, or us. We must foster a more loving relationship with food, which, over time, will end up being with ourselves. Stop punishing ourselves, judging ourselves… Miracle diets and restrictive behaviors only undermine us psychologically and metabolically. We must stop once and for all whipping ourselves with deprivation.
The idea is change the focus from aesthetics to health, to feel good, to find a varied, healthy and rich diet. With changes in customs and context aimed at a permanent modification of the way we eat, we will favor the care we deserve.
We cannot reflect outside what we do not reflect inside. Beauty goes beyond the physical appearance. Beauty is power, congruence, integrity, personality, good sense…
If you choose to lose weight, let it be for loving each other, not because it is what touches on the calendar and it is supposed to be done for social accommodation. If the choice to lose weight is made out of reconciliation with ourselves, out of a desire to take care of ourselves and feel healthy, because we recognize ourselves as valuable, it is more likely that we will achieve our goals.
lose weight with psychology
We must take into account what we ingest, how we do it and how we feel when doing it. Our state of mind, worries or what we think also accompany us at the table, influencing our appetite and in the quantity and quality of what we eat.
if we want succeed in weight loss and maintain it over time, it is essential to know and manage the cognitive and emotional processes that are influencing our eating habits in order to be able to effectively modify them.
Many of the problems with excess weight are due to we eat without hunger, and, therefore, an important point to take into account is to relearn to read the signals that our body sends us. That is, eat only when we are hungry and stop eating when we are full, eat consciously.
How to stop confusing hunger and anxiety
Do not confuse hunger with anxiety, relief, boredom, fear, frustration… Learn to discern hunger from pecking.
Neuroscience has discovered that food stimulates the same pleasure centers as with some drugs. Without being aware, we often use food to calm or mask our emotions and thus be able to satisfy our “emotional hunger”. Food thus becomes an easy and accessible shelter.
But, How can we distinguish emotional from physical hunger? Hunger is the physical need to eat while appetite is the desire, even craving, for food. Being hungry is a vital physiological need, essential to properly nourish our body.
hunger vs. appetite
In general, pure hunger only occurs in extreme circumstances of lack of food. The appetite, however, is influenced by context.
Factors such as smells, flavors, appearance and presentation of food or certain eating habits that predispose and/or trigger us towards ingestion are involved. Appetite is a gratifying desire, it has a great emotional component.
“Emotional hunger” overlaps with “physical hunger” to the point of losing the ability to perceive real hunger cues, satiety, satisfaction, etc… The objective should focus on changing the link that exists with food and investigate the causes of this “presumed” emotional eating to identify them and learn to control them. This way you don’t succumb to eating out of emotional emptiness.
Masked needs
The state of mind influences all areas of our life, in the way of eating as well. To discern what void we want to fill with food, what emotions are underlying, it can help us to ask ourselves the following questions:
Before eating
- Why am I going to eat?
- Out of hunger, anxiety, boredom?
- Have I had an upset and I don’t want to think about it right now?
- Do I feel lonely or alone and I don’t know what to do?
- What have I been thinking and feeling before eating?
During the meal
- How am I eating?
- I enjoy it?
- Do I take my time, or do I do it rashly and impulsively?
- What do I think and feel while I eat?
After lunch
- Is there conformity, satisfaction, disgust, or nervousness?
- Do I blame myself, do I judge myself?
- What do I think and feel after eating?
- What messages do I get?
Sometimes behind the need to eat there is a need for affection, comfort, company… If we understand what that “emotional hunger” sues us, it will be easier for us to solve it and solve it instead of masking it. Food should not become a mechanism to regulate our emotionsneither as a prize nor as compensation.
Techniques that help you
He mindfulness and meditation they can be good allies to investigate our answers, to learn to feel full and calm with the present moment. And I don’t want to forget to mention the power of visualization and imagination in weight control. The Spanish Nobel Prize winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal already supported the importance of mental practice to improve motor skills.
In the psychotherapy Imagination and visualization are used to treat problems such as stress, anxiety or phobias.
The use of the visualization and imaginationas an accompaniment to everything we have discussed so far, can help us in the formation of new connections in the brain, and break passivity to get going and change.
- So, on the one hand, imagine and visualize healthy food such as salads, vegetables, fruit or legumes, it will make us want to eat and enjoy them more.
- On the other hand, visualizing ourselves achieving our achievementsIn particular, losing weight will propel us towards our goals. The same will happen with how we feel and what we are capable of doing with those extra pounds.
- And also the resource of imagining how we can become and feel will bring us closer to doing it. I believe in myself so much, I can do it so much.
Lose weight for love (yourself)
Losing weight must be faced from our desire to be healthy. To take good care of ourselves and do it gradually and safely. It is a slow and constant process that can be done without suffering, anxiety and calmly. If it is done in a consistent, firm and stable way, with coherent and manageable objectives, there will be a good chance of success.
Educate ourselves in a new relationship with food in a balanced way it will determine that we gain in concentration, mental clarity and desire to do things. It will mean feeding us consciously, without masking our emotions and not as an emotional refuge.
And let’s not forget that sometimes the needs covered by food are difficult to manage without professional help.
not to be ruled out resort to a good nutritionist and/or psychologist to support and accompany us. We can even consider the possibility of going to mutual support groupswith other people who also want to lose weight but above all feel the desire to learn to love their body and give themselves permission to live a full life, freeing themselves from the weight that comes from depending on the goal of losing weight, as a condition to feel truly full and happy.
Learning new habits and strategies to express all the emotions and our dissatisfactions. Discovering new sources of pleasure, happiness and relaxation.
Dare to look together, finally, the root issue. Discovering that the issue of weight can be a good gateway to learn how to live more at peace with our bodies and with food.