It’s been awhile since I posted anything but recipes. I just want to talk about emotional eating for a bit, and how Paleo helped me.
I used to be an emotional eater, but I no longer am. The reason many people turn to food for comfort, is because it actually excites the “happiness” triggers in your brain. Unfortunately after you eat, you can experience a pretty rough decline of that happiness shortly thereafter. A lot of the junk food today, readily available to most, doesn’t help. It actually makes things worse. When eating Paleo, what I have experienced, is that my body is much more balanced. For example…my go-to emotional eating meal was a bagel or two, yes two. Anyone knows how you feel after eating a bagel….generally, you wake up for a bit, then you start to feel tired. Well, when you emotionally eat, that feeling of being tired is accompanied with feeling down and sad.
Take it from me, it’s a very, very hard habit to break. You can try to find another vice to help you not eat emotionally, but food is what people tend to go to. So, Entemann’s donuts are delicious…if I was feeling emotional, I could EASILY eat an entire box with a glass of milk. Nothing else mattered at the time. I’d finish the box, wait for the downward spiral of my mood, and go find some Ellio’s pizza to eat. It was a roller coaster; scariest of them all. I thought I would be stuck living like that forever. I started seeing the pounds add up, and I started seeing how my skin was affected, and my mood swings, and the fact that I never wanted to go anywhere. Emotional eating is a demon, but my God send was going Paleo.
I’m not saying you need to go Paleo to stop emotional eating, but you do need to find something that will help you break the habit. There are ways! The reason Paleo worked for me was my introduction to new foods and new ways of eating. It kept my attention diverted. I started treating my body better by what I was eating, and in return, my body was treating me better. My emotions stabilized, I broke a few bad habits, and the food I ate was nutritionally more balanced; all together, those things went a long way. Whether it’s the diet, or just mind over matter, I’ve learned to deal with things much better now, than before I started Paleo almost 2 years ago. And now, it’s not so much the eating that I love, but the cooking. I really enjoy cooking and maybe it’s because it’s a fun distraction, who knows.
Thanks to Paleo, I broke the habit of emotional eating and drinking soda!
Emotional eating is a crazy thing to understand, but it’s very real. How have you overcome your emotional eating?
“Whenever you find yourself doubting how far you can go, just remember how far you have come. Remember everything you have faced, all the battles you have won, and all the fears you have overcome.”
