How to stop comfort eating
The way to reduce comfort eating (you can’t get rid of it!) is to learn to be happier in other parts of your life so you don’t need to eat to feel happy
BUT…if you are comfort eating, it means there is something not quite right which is making you unhappy and so no amount of new knowledge will give you the strength to actually do them.
You already know you shouldn’t be eating it.
You already know you should be exercising more too.
The problem is more fundamental. Unless you actually tackle the underlying issue, your happiness, you won’t be strong enough to resist the urges most of the time.
Ask yourself this, why at the precise moment you grab the chocolate can’t you stop yourself. What is going on in your head?
I know because I did it, and STILL do.
It’s because I’m a sensitive person and I feel my emotions so strongly that it paralyses me, and then makes me feel guilt and judgement and so I self-sabotage.
OK, so “lets just get happy” you say.
But you can’t get happy until you do the hard stuff you know you need to.
And you can’t do the things you need to until you are happy.
You need to break the vicious cycle with something that in itself is VERY easy, but also makes you REALISE you are actually worth the effort of not eating.
I have found following this advice has both let me lose weight in a few weeks without needing to change my lifestyle, and also has made me get my willpower back to be able to smash other goals like stopping comfort eating.
“Go to bed a little earlier, a little bit hungry, for most of the week”.
That’s it. The whole system can be boiled down into this one phrase, and it’s brilliant because it both encourages you to do the right things, as well as supports you when you can’t (notice the word “Try”, and the phrase “most of the week”, they are not things you normally see in any program!).
To achieve this foundation, I want you to follow these 3 principles:
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Only eat when you’re hungry, and eat about 75% of your portion: It’s really important that you eat as soon as you’re hungry as it helps to manage your energy supply chain (think of eating when you’re hungry a bit like DHL running smoothly because things run like clockwork). If you don’t eat as soon as you’re hungry, you’ll be ravenous and overeat, which will encourage your body to store fat. Also, don’t start being a vegan if currently you eat meat. When you’re eating your normal food, just try and reduce your portion size. This might mean you need healthy snacks between meals to tide you over. You shouldn’t be hungry for more than a few minutes, if you do find you need more food because you like to feel full, try and add uncooked vegetables to fill you up.
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Going to bed a bit earlier: Basically, when we stay up late it means that the next day we’re not totally rested, and end up making decisions that aren’t great. So, we slide out of bed just before leaving for work and thus skip breakfast, then have to buy tasty snacks at work, it all goes downhill from there and you’ll probably subconsciously eat a bit more food because you feel tired also. Instead, just going to bed a little bit earlier can help you wake up refreshed and ready to kick ass which means it’s much easier to follow your 3 principles.
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Pause when you need to.
THIS IS THE BEST PIECE OF ADVICE – Notice the foundation has no specific numbers as the goal. It just says try to get to a point where most of the week you succeed. The first week you may not achieve the foundation any day, but you’ve tried and that’s great. The second week if you manage to plan you will, and from there on it gets easier. This rule really means that when you feel down it is totally alright to eat what you want and just respect your whims. BUT the deal is that if you’re allowed to blow out, you promise that the second you feel strong enough again, you’ll get back to the first two principles.
This is literally all I want you to start thinking about. No transformations, no exercise routines and no telling yourself off. If you’re feeling strong, and you can start it now, then why not start this minute. Wait until you’re hungry to eat, and try and get to bed a bit earlier.
Brief background on why it works
The key to the principles are that by eating a smaller portion when you’re hungry is that you’ll reduce the chances of eating too many carbohydrates in one meal. When we eat too many carbs, especially in the evening, it can cause our blood to have a glucose spike. Sugar spikes (all carbs are a form of sugar) are one of the reasons people get Type 2 Diabetes.
Warning: We are habitual creatures and initially you’ll find it hard to listen to the subtle hunger signals. I feel these in the pit of my stomach, it’s a faint feeling. I also feel fake hunger and that can be a nervous or clock watching hunger which I feel at the top of my stomach, or in my throat. Each of these fake types you can ignore.
Please avoid any diet mentality that is lying around in your head. I want you to change the absolute minimum you can in your life to feel better. Unless you crack this foundational step you’ll find that you won’t get the longer term benefits.
This ALSO means no adding exercise, no changing all your foods, and no starving yourself.
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If you add exercise, you won’t know if it was the exercise that used the excess calories, or that you’d really learnt to listen to your hunger.
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If you change all your food, this will again confuse your head. The idea isn’t to be as healthy as possible, it’s to add the simplest rule that will bring about your health motivation.
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And most importantly, you must not starve yourself. One of the key ways that I like to think of metabolism is it’s like you have a contract with your stomach. If you feed your body every time it’s hungry, it won’t go into “STARVATION” mode where it turns everything it doesn’t need on standby, and so your calorie burning throughout the day will be more consistent.
Just to confirm that you should feel that this goal should be simple to achieve. It shouldn’t turn your life upside down, and should fit around your food. You eat at normal times, just adjust your portion size accordingly if you’re hungry earlier, or wait because your earlier portion was too big.
- Tom Salvini Quora
