Mindless Eating

It’s amazing how we turn to food for all sorts of reasons, boredom, stress, anxiety, feeling down, are the obvious ones but everyone has different reasons and at different times.  The most important thing is to start noticing when and why you start picking or binging.  Once you can identify the cause of your behaviour you can start to change it. 

It’s a good idea to log your food and liquid intake for 2 weeks, which may seem a total faff but patterns will emerge which you may not be aware of.  Do you eat after your evening meal while watching television or relaxing?  You may be unaware of how much you are consuming unintentionally, and you can start to look at this behaviour and ask why you are doing this.  I have a habit of eating at 4pm, I know this is my weak spot, and being aware of it I can choose to do something else or to choose healthier snacks.  If I know that this is my weak time I can be prepared and change. 

It’s a good idea to not just log your intake but to log your emotions too, this helps to understand your snacking/binging drivers.  Understanding behaviours can help you to change them or to manage them better.  To change from mindless eating to mindful eating is a process of awareness and understanding, asking yourself why, when, what and how helps with this. 

These changes do not have to be about denying yourself pleasure or enjoyment but about understanding and bringing balance to your eating habits, to your emotions and to your hectic life.  Making small adjustments in your habits can lead to achieving your health goals.

Hypnotherapy and coaching can really help you to question these behaviours and to make permanent changes in your life which will help you to make better, healthier choices.  It can help to retrain your conscious and subconscious habits.