Put a Damper on Emotional Eating

If you’re an emotional eater, you’re not alone. Food is the most common means of dealing with negative feelings. While the occasional bowl of ice cream won’t cause any harm, many people take it too far. Unhealthy foods can cause a myriad of health issues when consumed in large quantities.

Negative eating also takes a toll on your self-esteem. Feeling out of control isn’t empowering. You can regain that sense of control by eliminating emotional eating from your life.

Understand the factors that control emotional eating:

1. Develop pleasures other than food. Emotional eating is challenging to give up because it’s so pleasurable. Food can make us feel much better, at least in the short-term. Scientists consider food as addicting as narcotics.

•       The most effective way to give up a pleasurable habit is to find a substitute. You can find another way to soothe yourself without eating. You might listen to music, exercise, get a massage, take a bubble bath, or chat with a friend

2. Slow down. If you have to eat, slow down. Focus on the feeling and taste of each bite. You’ll eat less and feel better about yourself afterwards.

3. Learn your trigger points. It might be coming home after a long, hard day. Or maybe you turn to food when you’re bored or lonely. Recognize the situations that bring food into the picture. Develop a strategy for staying ahead of your urges. Carry healthy snacks so you’re always prepared.

4. Learn to accept feeling uncomfortable. Rather than trying to make yourself feel better, just sit with your discomfort and examine it. What does it feel like? Where is it located? If you can look at it dispassionately, it will begin to wane.

•       Keep in mind that emotions are just a collection of chemicals that result in physical sensations. We then label a particular set of body sensations as anxiety, fear, loneliness, and so on. Your emotions are just physical sensations. You don’t have to do anything about them.

5. Be more aware. Sometimes we plop down in front of the television and devour a bag of chips before we even realize what’s going on. If you’re going to eat, then do nothing but eat. Be mindful while you’re eating and you’ll eat less. You’ll also be more aware of the quality of the food you’re consuming.

•       Ask yourself, “Why am I eating this? Am I hungry?”

6. Love your body. If you dislike your body, you’re more likely to mistreat it by overeating. It’s almost impossible to make changes that affect your body in a positive way if you hate your body in the first place.

•       Think of all the unique and amazing things your body can do. Find a way to love your amazing body.

7. Fill up on healthy food. If you eat a healthy diet, it’s difficult to eat enough to gain weight. Keep yourself comfortably full with healthy foods. If your stomach is full, eating is a less appetizing idea.

8. Get sufficient sleep. When we get tired, our mood suffers. Eating is also a response to a lack of energy. Get enough sleep so you’re not tired. Willpower also suffers when we feel fatigued. Go to bed earlier.

Eating is an effective, but unhealthy, way to make ourselves feel better in the moment. Stopping the cycle of emotional eating requires finding another way to deal with discomfort. Emotional eating is a learned behavior. You can learn to deal with life differently. Love yourself and make a commitment to gain control of your behavior.

6 Important Steps to Better Mental Health

Unlike physical health issues, which are often obvious and have readily identifiable symptoms or pain sensations, mental and emotional well-being can be trickier. Now more than ever, we should be paying attention to mental and emotional health and how we process feelings. The rise of mental illness in the US, especially among teens and young adults, is alarming. Depression and suicide rates are not only the highest in the past 30 years but of all time, and suicide attempts are starting younger and younger. In light of August being Mental Awareness Month, let’s look at ways to best address mental health together.

The Difference Between Physical and Emotional Health

Age-related physical health issues like muscle pain, joint pain and limited motion, or disability, usually don’t hit most people until middle age or older. It’s fairly uncommon for teens and people in their 20s and 30s to have chronic aches and pains unless they experience some sort of injury.

Emotional issues, however, seem to manifest most often when kids reach adolescence, although research is showing they could start at much earlier ages as a result of traumas. For example, sexual molestation, physical abuse, an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional parent, or even a parent who fails to empower, validate, or show affection to a child, can all lead to emotional traumas with lasting effects.

What Happens When Emotional Issues Mount

These emotional issues can easily get stuffed down where they fester and smolder for years. They can affect your decisions in life and can make you careless and reckless or lead to isolation, depression, drug use, alcohol use, job loss, or abuse of your friends and relationships. They attract people into your life who will press your emotional buttons in a bad way – and these relationships can become very tumultuous and damaging, affecting the rest of your future.

As pressure from these various events and stressors build, it can begin to feel that life is falling apart. Often it takes an intervention or extensive counseling to help a person suffering in such a way to regain strength, and deal with the ways all those incidents negatively impacted them. This can involve a painful but beneficial process of rebuilding, discarding old and harmful beliefs and presuppositions, and forgiving others who have contributed to the suffering, intentionally or not.

What You Can Do to Be More Emotionally Sound

So what can you do now? There’s no quick cure for serious trauma, of course. But there are five things that mental health practitioners have suggested that you can do right now to help you stay more mentally healthy:

1.     Get in Touch with Your Emotions

Sounds cliche, but it’s true. Whenever someone calls you a “crybaby”, a “whiner” or a “drama queen”, or tells you to “be strong, don’t let this get you down” or perhaps “what happened to you isn’t a big deal, get over it”, do NOT take this advice. Sometimes your friends and loved ones are genuinely trying to help you but lack understanding, and other times they are asking you to do what will make them feel the most comfortable. Either way, an injury does not heal if it’s untreated, and emotional or psychological injuries are just as real as physical ones. What you need most is someone who can actually listen to you explain how you feel and take you seriously. If you ignore big emotions, you may end up stuffing true feelings where they can never be honestly dealt with. And stuffed emotions may point to an ongoing of physical and emotional pain or illness overtime, or behaviors that you don’t realize are negatively impacted.

Learn how to express your emotions positively. There are counselors and classes you can find online that are very effective. Perhaps the classes may be in the form of a transformation or even an anger management classes - how to be assertive, how to deal with your emotions, or even how to deal with difficult people. Don’t let a negative stigma associated with “counseling” prevent you from attending to your emotional health. Whether through groups, classes, or counseling, it’s important to learn healthy ways to manage your emotions. Especially since this topic is not one taught in typical schools or even in many home situations. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can raise your emotional intelligence once you’re empowered with knowledge, and how doing so can change your life positively.

2.     Improve Your Diet

What you eat is affecting you every minute of the day. It affects how you perceive situations and react to them. For example, if your blood sugar level is low because you eat sugar or processed foods you will tend to overreact to situations and have more drastic emotional swings. This behavior can lead to further issues as your relationships with others become fraught.

If you’re looking for a diet that may contribute to mental and emotional stability, look for one that is:

• low in chemicals, preservatives, and pesticides (toxins), including high fructose corn syrup found in many beverages
• low or absent in sugars except from low glycemic index fruit
• normal to higher in protein
• normal or higher in fat
• a little low on calories, but not too strict
• low in overall carbohydrates
• high in fiber
• low in foods like wheat and other grains that are high on the glycemic index scale
• low in processed foods and beverages like soda
• not excessive in caffeine intake
• uses grass-fed meats and wild fish rather than commercially produced meats
• high in vegetables and fruits, moderate in nuts and seeds

This type of diet isn’t one you can easily change overnight but the more of these rules of thumb you start to incorporate over time, the greater the emotional stability you will see in your own life. Your relationships with friends and loved ones may improve as well.

3.     Give cbdMD a Try

To best set your mental health on the right track, one must ensure your sleep hygiene is also dialed in, meaning you must not skimp on quality 7.5-9 hours of rest each night. The innumerable amount of people who are turning to the therapeutic aspects of cannabidiol (CBD) compounds typically extracted from hemp and infused into gummies, lotions, tinctures and other products are finding their ability to sleep much better. People report experiencing less stress and anxiousness overall. A high-quality company such as cbdMD does not take any shortcuts in growing, harvesting and formulating their CBD products. Their satisfied, worldwide customer base reports cbdMD products continue to help regulate the body under high stress circumstances, in which their products helps the user experience a sweet sense of calm and focus, and may be one of the most important daily steps in improving anyone’s quality of life.

4.     Exercise Regularly

Exercise resets your body’s ability to deal with stress. It can really be any type of exercise – bicycling, walking, powerlifting, working out with weights, or swimming – all of these have great benefits!   Exercise releases endorphins that improve your mood and overall sense of wellbeing. Some routines, like yoga, incorporate activities like stretching and conscious breathing that can help you relax and calm your mind.

5.     3 Deep, Diaphragmatic Breaths  

Sometimes going from reaction, agitation and anger to a calmer state is as easy as taking 3 deep, diaphragmatic breaths. When a slow, methodical and intentional breath is taken in through the nose and fills up the lungs, the central nervous system of the body is able to be calmer. Most people hold their breaths or take shallow ones when in the face of fear, stress or uncertainty. 3 deep, diaphragmatic breaths allows your lungs to expand to its fullest and promotes relaxation, as this practice best allows your organs and tissues to fully become oxygenated and disarming the negative effects of the parasympathetic “fight or flight” responses of the body.  

6. Get Enough Vitamin D

It’s said that 6-12 oysters a day keeps depression away. This must be because oysters have a ton of vitamin D and zinc. It’s true that vitamin D is one of the best serotonin boosters, the feel-good hormone that is imperative to lifting mood. Vitamin D is also great for immune boosting and supporting long-term mood stabilizing health. To ensure you are getting your rightful amount of vitamin D, take a high quality supplement, get some natural sunshine on your body daily and eat foods high in vitamin D, such as mushrooms, sardines and, yes, oysters!

Remember that your emotional health and mental health is something every bit as important as your physical health, and very often the two are connected. Being mindfully aware of what it is you need, practicing daily self-care, asking for help when you need it, taking time to pause and take a break before the burnout, and doing something that brings you joy each day. . . are some of the most important self-care tactics you can do in life for success in your relationships, jobs and in the way you view yourself.

How Meditation Can Improve Your Health

The most common image of meditation is one of a monk in a religious experience. However, meditation is actually a practice that anyone can do to improve mind function and overall health.

Meditation has been proven to reduce stress levels and it can even help with conditions such as high blood pressure. Once you've become more calm and peaceful through meditation, your life will open up to more opportunities and you'll find it easier to make healthy choices.

What Exactly Is Meditation?

Meditation is a way of clearing the mind. Once you've gotten into a habit of meditating often, you'll discover that it's easier than you think.

Some people sit in a cross-legged position when they meditate, but this isn't mandatory. Another sitting position might be more comfortable for you, but the key is to maintain a good posture. If you slouch, you're more likely to get tired and feel like falling asleep.

To get started, find a quiet place and get comfortable. Then start taking deep breaths in and out. Pay attention to your breath. You might find it helpful to say a "mantra" to yourself as you breathe in and out. Your goal is to keep your mind clear of thoughts.

Thoughts are inevitable though. The best way to eliminate them is to recognize that you've had a thought and then focus on your breathing and clearing your mind again. This will get easier with frequent practice.

Stress Free

When you focus on breathing and clearing your mind, you're actually centered on the present moment. On the other hand, stress arises when you think about something in the past or future.

Since you have little stress when you have a clear mind in the present moment, you exude calmness. When you practice this often, you can bring a calm, stress-free demeanor to your everyday life.

Stress And The Body

When you feel stressed, you put your body into overdrive. When it's overworked, it's more open to various diseases and disorders. Stress exists for a reason; you need to have the hormonal adrenalin rush and increased breathing and heart rate in order to escape threatening situations. It's simply how you're able to handle threats.

By always having your mind on past or future stressors, you keep your mind and body in a stressful state even when you aren't enduring a stressful situation in the present. This is exactly why it's important to give your body a much needed break from all the stress. When you learn to meditate often, you're giving your body the energy and rest it needs to stave off exhaustion and disease.

Improving Your Health

The absence of overwhelming stress improves your health in many ways. You'll likely enjoy lower blood pressure and a strengthened immune system. Stress can also lead to mental disorders, so when you strive to be stress-free, you'll keep anxiety and depression away as well.

When you meditate, you place your body in a kind of sleep state. You're still awake, but your body can begin to repair itself in the same way that it does when you sleep. If you meditate in the morning or at night, you can help yourself transition from sleeping to wakefulness and vice versa.

Meditation is the ultimate exercise for a healthy mind and body. You'll feel refreshed and rejuvenated once you've given it a try. Who knew that "just sitting" could be so helpful!