End Your Love Affair with Food

If you are going to get serious about a weight control diet, i.e. losing weight and maintaining your goal weight, you are going to have to end your love affair with food. Now don't try to deny it. You've been seen. And if you don't call it off right now, it's all going to end in tears.

You cannot embrace fatty, sugary and salty treats to prop you up when the going gets tough. It's not what you need and deep down in your fat encrusted heart, you know it's not what you really really want.

The way I see it, there are 3 major reasons we comfort eat. Stress, boredom and the influence of negative emotions such as sadness, anger and loneliness.

Comfort food is not going to fix any of these problems. You are. By recognising the triggers for what they are and disassociating food from your solution.

Everyone suffers from stress. More so in our fast paced and demanding modern society than ever. You are attempting to escape from your stress by indulging in food treats. It's not the right thing to do. You can deal more effectively with your stress through relaxing activities such as meditation, yoga, massage or taking a walk. You can face your stress head on and develop strategies for working through it. Both methods are much more positive for you than feeding your

insecurities and worrying some more.

If you eat through boredom, you need to get another hobby. Eating should not be a time filler. Having coffee can be a time filler, but not if it incorporates a big fat chocolate brownie as an essential side dish. Taking up a sport or a class can be a new hobby. Eating should not be the focus of your day. If the things you look forward to most every day revolve around the contents of the refrigerator, then it's time to get a life. Do something you've always wanted to do, so long as it does not involve food.

You don't want to hear this but you choose your own emotions. If you are typically sad or angry or lonely, that is what you have chosen to be. It's become a nasty habit to be negative or down. No one actually "makes" you feel a certain way. You choose an emotion as a response to whatever situation you are in. With a lot of initial effort (that gets easier with practice) you can choose to be happy or satisfied or calm instead. Your choice.

There's one other major reason we comfort eat. And it's both insidious and alluring like the seductive song of a sugar coated siren. We are told to comfort eat. We are encouraged to give in to our stresses, boredoms and negative emotions by our old nemesis the mass media.

Have a good long objective look at how advertisers market their food products. How many of these foods claim they'll make you happy, interesting, popular and/or sexy??? (I'm guessing probably all of them). Learn to recognise the tricks of the advertising trade and you will be more readily able to repulse them.

If you are overweight, chances are that you indulge in some form of comfort eating. Figure out why you comfort eat and you will be well on the way to a D-i-v-o-r-c-e from your thoroughly unsuitable love.

You'll be much happier once it's all over.

Rosie Peters gives common sense advice, encouragement and tips for weight loss, sensible diet and lifelong fitness. Sometimes it's not what you want to hear, but what you need to know. Visit Rosie at weight-control-diet-advice.com Rosie's ebook, Weight Loss is Simple may be the inspiration you need.