Saturday, August 6, 2011

Are you an emotional eater?

Hey ! - you are a precious person - body, mind and spirit! – We all need to be aware that eating a pint of ice cream isn’t health producing to the body - BUT - the guilt over eating it also is an energy robber and oftentimes worse than the empty calories! Negative emotions can suck the life right out of you. If and when this happens - let it go and move on – next time just do better!

I believe we need to sincerely look at why we are not living healthy and fit and uncover the underlying reasons. Are we emotional eaters? When you were a child did a grown up offer you food as a comfort or reward? I'll bet you if that happened to you it was a piece of candy and not an apple, wasn't it? This conditioned and taught your body and your mind and emotions to use food to handle an emotion that was either positive or negative.

Food and nutrition is what our body's need to function and thrive. It should not be a band-aid or a form of reward. I'm not saying we shouldn't enjoy food as we celebrate moments in life - just make quality food choices when you do! That's even more to celebrate in itself - eating right for health and wellness!!

Here's another example of how conditioned we've become -most people when they get a headache, for example, do not look back and consider the poor food they ate or the environmental toxins they exposed themselves to. Instead they pop a pill and hope the headache “goes away”. However, your body creates symptoms to get your attention that something is wrong. Headaches are a result of some toxin within the body – this may be a greasy hamburger, alcohol, birthday cake, a virus, or even a toxic emotion such as anger for that matter. I guarantee that your headache is not a result of your body having a Tylenol deficiency. Keeping your food and symptom journal will also help you to stay on track - making good healthy choices for you and your body.