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Emotional Eating (Expert Forum)
how to stop emotional eating? need urgent help
Answered by
Roger Gould, M.D. - Mental Health, Wellness
Questions in the Emotional Eating forum are answered by Dr. Roger Gould. Topics covered include anger and eating, anxiety and eating, binge eating, depression and eating, eating to "fit in", emotional eating, fill the void eating, guilt and eating, loneliness and eating, social eating, and stress and eating.
how to stop emotional eating? need urgent help
by mommy74, Dec 12, 2007 12:44AM
I admit I have a problem with overeating...eating when I'm all worked up or depressed. I am having severe trouble in my marriage, have a son who is facing medical trouble and basically I am failing at coping with everything in my life. I am up before 7 in the morning, cook and clean, put my son on the schoolbus and reach work by 9. I leave anywhere between 7 and 8pm, reach home after a 40 minute commute and have to serve my family dinner. By the time I finish preparing everything for the next day, it is almost 10.30. My husband helps out a bit. In addition, I have to handle all our finance, all our shopping and just about everything else. My son is 6 but hates to go to sleep, which means that by the time I put him to sleep, my sleep has vanished and I am often up until midnight or beyond, leaving me pretty lethargic in the morning. Weekends are worse, if not better. I need to find a way to stop eating when I don't need to. Can you please help?
Doctor's Answer
by Roger Gould, M.D., Dec 12, 2007 06:55PM
, Dec 12, 2007 06:55PM
To: mommy74 and Tony
Emotional eating is a very widespread bad habit that is a strong addiction, so simple tips and methods will not work for very long. The basic facts of your life are difficult, and you are challenged to make somehting work,but eating too much doesn't help the real life problem, and does not help you cope. In fact,the opposite, because everytime you eat to turn off your mind, you turn off your problem solving, thinking mind. I have written a book on the subject, shrink yourself, and I have a website, shrinkyourself.com,with free information that describes how to go about changing this pattern.
Another thing I would say is to buy less food and not store food in the pantry unless it is Tuna (tuna has 0 carbs, low fat and high protien and the carbs wont be stored as fat if you don't have time to exercise.)
Try to stay social and find out what activities you can do for yourself. In other words try making some time for yourself and setting new goals.
I am also available to talk if you would like to on msn messenger. I am also going through a difficult time with getting my schedule back on track and staying away from eating at the wrong times.
Hope theres something useful in these words and good luck,
-Tony
Thanks for all the information. Yes, i certainly do need somebody to talk to, if not in real life, then certainly on chat. I will get an msn ID and let you know of that.
Stocking the right food is a real challenge for me because I need to stock kiddy-friendly food (not junk) and regular stuff for my husband and that gets attractive. I've tried to snack on plain salads (no dressing) and some fruits and seeds.
I am also taking steps to take control of other parts of my life, one step at a time.
I finally saw a psychiatrist recently when I realized i was simply not being able to cope after a particularly upleasant morning regarding my husband. I don't want to get hooked on meds, but he said it was for a week, just to get me to calm down somewhat and take it from there through counselling.