How to get rid of compulsive overeating

A person has long ceased to use food only for the thickening of hunger. Today, many open the door of the refrigerator, when very upset, angry or just nothing to do. Could our distant primitive ancestor imagine that there will be a habit in the future will be treated? So, a modern man turned the food to the tool to achieve sincere equilibrium. Is it so bad and how to build healthy relationships with food, let's talk in the article.

What does compulsive overeating mean

Emotional hunger, disorders of food behavior, destructive attitude towards food, compulsive overeating - a lot of concepts, and the meaning is one. A person ceases to belong to himself when his consciousness replaces the concept of physical hunger with an emotional need to eat something.

We all love to eat delicious, especially since for this you do not need to track down the prey, as the primitive person did. It is enough to walk to the nearest supermarket and endure the cart with appetizing snack. Choose what the soul will wish. Maybe precisely because of this availability and diversity of delicious products, many people fall into a closed circle of food slavery? The root cause of this, of course, lies in the presence of a psychological problem, but how simple and nice to raise yourself the mood of the next portion of sweets or fast food!

So, all variations of emotional hunger are united by one indicative feature. This is the all-consuming desire of high-calorie food against the background of psychological discomfort. Here are the main types of destructive food behavior.

Nervous anorexia

The disorder enslaves in the main audience of adolescence. During this period of life, everything, according to an adhent person, is not as much as I would like: the waist is annoying with extra centimeters, and Passia does not pay any attention. The distorted perception of his body and reality in general leads to an internal protest, which is expressed by a refusal of food. The teenager asserts in his own eyes due to the rapid weight loss. The more kilograms are lost, the horrible thinks about the weight set.

Nervous Bulimia

This disorder is manifested by uncontrolled absorption of a huge amount of food, followed by deliverance from the eaten. To purify the stomach and intestines to move everything: conscious provocation of attacks of vomiting, reception of laxative and diuretic products, compliance with the most severe diets. The pathological circle is tightly closed: as soon as the last piece of food is swallowed, the patient has an insurmountable need to be cleaned.

Compulsive overeating

We all sometimes lose control over their appetite, eating more superfluous for watching a fascinating film or during a noisy feast. But in episodic cases of overeating, doctors do not see anything pathological from the point of view of psychiatry. It is quite different things when a person is systematically given to the power of food. Compulsive dependence forces to fall into edible and in a short period of time (1.5 - 2 hours) greedily absorb a large amount of food without parsing.

With such a food disorder, a person is not able to control the amount of eaten. It also does not matter what it is he eats - only filling the stomach in the shortest possible time. The insight occurs only during periods of the clutch between food breakdowns. People suffering from such disorder can have one degree of obesity, although there are both "consumers" with a body weight within the normal range. Compulsive overeating occurs more often than bulimia and anorexia, however, unlike the latter, the habit of absorbing the mountains of food, without noticing this, in most cases it is possible to overcome independently, without the help of a doctor.

Causes of compulsive overeating

A compulsive feeling of hunger is a problem of psycho-emotional nature, so doctors identified a group of emotions, which in one degree or another forcing a person that and the case to clap the door of the refrigerator. List them:

1. Stress. Any tense situation makes us worry, and when we have to face every day with such situations, a resistant overvoltage is formed. This condition stimulates the active synthesis of cortisol, the so-called stress hormone. Due to the high content of cortisol in the blood of a person and pulls into a fatty heavy food for the stomach, which gives short-term joy from a saturation sense. To stretch the pleasure, you need to eat a single portion of fast food.
2. Negative emotions. Excessive filling of the stomach of food for a while muffles the oppressive feeling, which is experiencing a person when angry, is afraid, saddened, alarmed, abandoned, offended or ashamed.
3. Idleness, boredom. Chewing in front of the TV is the most common and easy way to take yourself when to do nothing. Wast time to absorb food more pleasant than to recognize the aimlessness of your life at the moment.
4. Habit from childhood. In most cases, we inherit the scheme of food behavior that parents imposed to us in childhood. Remember how you treated food in your family when you were a child. You were awarded sweet for the good marks in the table, we saw a tight piece when you were sorry for something? Many people grow up with the conviction that food can console and be a delicious reward for personal achievements. In some cases, through the emotional overeating, we express nostalgia about the long-lasting time in the warm parent nest.
5. The influence of society. For the abundance of food, you can briefly distract from problems at work, drown out nervousness after communicating with an unpleasant colleague or chef. This can also include a trip with buddies in a cafe. Everyone is eaten - how to get behind!

In truth, the reasons that are forced to rush to the emotional overeating outer with their heads, lie down the modern person at every step.

Danger of compulsive overeating

Trying to pick up the key to solving problems with the help of an additional portion of harmful food meaningless - it's like to fight with windmills. But the real complications of destructive food behavior - atherosclerosis and obesity - do not wait long to wait. Psychogenic overeating only increases the abyss between emotionally unsatisfied person and society, exposes its psychological and physical health to serious risk. That's what happens if it does not overcome a compulsive overeating:

1. The person dependent on the emotional overeating is distinguished from relatives and loved ones, refuses joint trapes with them. He fears that he will not be able to restrain and make its secret and shameful dependence. The enslave food is forced to give preference to a closed lifestyle.
2. After the attack of the gluttony, a person repents in the deed, suffer from a feeling of shame and guilt. Over time, it is increasingly beginning to attend depression. Disadvantaged on your own life, disgusting to myself often pushing the unfortunate in the arms of another detrimental dependence - alcohol or narcotic.
3. Compulsive overeating leaves an indelible imprint on the health of his victim. A person appears an extra weight, a large load on the joints provokes the development of arthritis, the high level of cholesterol in the blood becomes the cause of hypertensive disease. Moreover, heart, intestines, kidneys, gallbladder suffer from regular attacks of gluttony. The character of a person is changing: he becomes irritated, hot-tempered, embittered and even more insecure.

Do you suffer from emotional hunger?

At the heart of a compulsive overeating - moral satisfaction. At the bottom of the plate, a person seeks to find a solution to all his problems, as well as to comfort at the time of stress, rage, frustration or loneliness. In fact, the problem is that food brings only fleeting pleasure and cannot quench emotional hunger. After emptying the refrigerator, a person feels even worse: tortured the feeling of guilt for the lack of willpower. Compulsive overeating - a bog, from the chain hugs that sometimes get very difficult. As far as you are subject to this weakness, you can find out right now. To do this, try to honestly answer the following questions:

1. Do you increase your portions when you experience stress?
2. Do you eat when you do not feel feelings of hunger?
3. Do you want to raise yourself mood?
4. Do you use food as a reward for personal achievements?
5. Do you feel protected when your refrigerator is full of food?
6. Are you experiencing irritation and impotence, when once again I fed to the dump?

Even half of the affirmative answers to the test questions means that you are inclined to quench emotional hunger due to dense snacks. Even if cases of uncontrolled overeating occur with you only episodically, no time to sit back. To take your appetite for all over and forever, you need to act resolutely. First, let's deal with the physiological hunger differs from the emotional need to distract to food.

How to deal with compulsive overeating: burn bridges

As soon as you catch the difference between imaginary and real appetite, you will never find yourself on the hook at the habit of feeding to the dump. At first, it will be difficult to do it, especially if you have to "eat" the bad mood. However, there are several nuances, focusing on which you will understand whether you should open the refrigerator now or you can still suffer.

 The main differences of false hunger from this:

1. The feeling of false hunger will cause you surprise and quickly increases. He huses all thoughts from your head. You can only think about food. This hunger develops gradually and does not require momentary satisfaction.
2. Testing fake hunger, you want to eat a particular product: a bug, a sandwich with sausage, something fatty, sharp or sweet. With the present hunger you will suit and apple. Even the most fresh and unloved products like oatmeal porridge will seem attractive if you are really hungry. At the same time, emotional hunger requires food that will provide an instantaneous tide of energy - fruit and vegetables here can not do.
3. Fake hunger does not mercate even with full stomach, and the real passes, as soon as you filed. That is why emotional hunger forces a person to carelessly chew: chips, ice cream - anyway, because the taste of food is practically not felt. Quenching physical hunger, it is much easier to focus on taste and quantity of food.
4. After satisfaction of the emotional hunger, the bitter aftertaste remains: the realization comes that the appetite again broke out from under control, and he grows the feeling of guilt about this. Saturation at the present hunger brings good health and fine mood: a person is full of strength and can be switched to some productive occupation.
5. The most important distinguishing feature of the emotional overeating is that the hunger occupied the thoughts of a person, and not his stomach. Physiological hunger makes us focus on taste, smell, food texture, as well as the sensations that this dish brings us. With the help of satisfying psychological hunger, a person is filled with mental problems, but does not solve them, therefore Coruse himself for the amount of eaten.

Treatment of compulsive overeating

We offer you to overcome a dangerous disorder on our own.

Diary of mood

The attacks of compulsive overeating are caused by the causes that relate to the emotional plane. Irritating factors governing our appetite, each of their own. To understand what circumstances, feelings or thoughts make you seek a consolation in food, make a special mood diary.

After each emotional attack of overeating, open the notebook and write down in detail everything about your problem. What situation preceded the desire to eat? What mood you got at the table? What did you think about? What did you feel when I found? Questions and answers to them can be much more. Even the most frivolous, at first glance, the most non-serious, at first glance, details. Can you imagine that not only negative emotions can call a compulsive overeating, but also joyful events in your life? So, the habit of celebrating significant dates and holidays with a rich feast can quickly transform into emotional hunger. That is why it is so important to know your enemy in the face, because he can wait for you anywhere. And only exposing and removing it, you can move on. With the help of a mood diary, you can establish the pattern of your attacks, you will understand that and when it encourages you to eat a lot. Only after eliminating the true cause of compulsive overeating, you can think than "feed" your emotions, except food.

Conscious management of feelings

It is very important to learn how to replenish the emotional gap of your consciousness not with real products, but in other ways of spiritual self-realization. As soon as you find than replacing food, learn how to control your willpower and sigh calmly - overeating is no longer powerful above you.

How to oust emotional hunger from your life:

1. When you feel bad and lonely, pay no attention to the refrigerator, but on what is significantly for you: stick a pet (cats and dogs - the best healers of spiritual wounds), re-read your favorite book, call a friend with whom I have not communicated for a long time or Paint album with family photos.
2. Anger can be dispelled by going to a long walk. As an option - turn on the houses of music on the entire volume and dance until you fall.
3. Fatigue remove the mug of warm herbal tea or a relaxing bathroom with candlelight. A cozy plaid and an exciting book to trust the picture of the perfect evening.
4. A boredom will help defeat the hobby, and not trouble, if you do not have it yet. Remember what you loved to do in childhood? Modern person, if desired, everything is available: drawing, modeling, dancing, plowing of polymer clay, playing guitar ...

As you can see, the tips are very simple and uncomplicated. But it is this way - slowly lustful pages of the book, embroider, causing the four-legged friend or enjoying hot tea - you can resist the temptation to stretch your stomach with a huge amount of food, and then regret it. Very soon you will begin to enjoy the awareness of what is calm and productively spend time without overeating. Take all your negative emotions as a challenge yourself - there is a problem and need to be solved immediately. Listen to yourself, work on yourself, love yourself, and then no food will be able to interest you as much as you yourself.

Ignoring temptations

People suffering from compulsive overeating, accustomed to indulge in their false appetite, which wakes up at the most inopportune moment and requires saturation here and now. The victims of the disorder of food behavior consider themselves powerless before this pathological habit, but in fact they are much stronger than they can imagine.

Try to curb your hunger and cannot be shedding. To do this, apply in practice "Rule 5 minutes". As soon as you feel an irresistible desire to throw something in your mouth, promise to do it in 5 minutes. During this time, focus on your feelings, and you will realize that you do not hurt you, you do not threaten a mortal danger, you will not happen to you if you do not quench the feeling of hunger instantly. Such training will gradually dispel in your eyes the significance of the total increment, which keeps you in the vice. Very soon you will begin to think constructively and you will realize how to resist pathological addiction.

Emotional overeating is a meaningless process. To get rid of it, act from the opposite: fill your life with priorities.

1. Do physical exercises every day. The energy born in sports, creative, so it will not allow you to be mired in the quagmire of the uncontrolled eating food. Over time, the mental memory of your body will require another portion of training, and not devastating the refrigerator.
2. Each day allocate yourself for 30 - 40 minutes to rest. How do you spend this time depends only from you. Walk, read, sleep, learn foreign words - do something that you get pleasure. It charges you a good energy portion.
3. Communicate with people - it's so easy today! Lay old friends on social networks, join groups of interests, share your hobbies or experiences on the forums, negotiate about real meetings, visit your parents, and then you will not worry about that alone. Live communication is the most powerful antidepressant.

In conclusion, we turn to statistics: from a compulsive overeating today suffers 4 times more people than from cancer diseases. Impressive digit, isn't it? However, modern society does not give food disorders of great importance, so people who have faced such a problem are in confusion, not knowing how to overcome a detrimental dependence.

To end and forever end the food slavery, you need to believe in your significance. A person who feels like a person will never hurt himself, will not be exchanged for such trifles as the emptying of the refrigerator under the oppressive feeling of hunger. Decide your emotional problems with other people and serious work on yourself, then food will cease to be a wand-cutting for all occasions.

How to resist bulimia and compulsive overeating. Video

Who will understand a person with a disorder of food behavior better than the one who has survived all this and left in the past? Listen to the girl who was able to defeat the edible dependence.