The Glycemic Index Diet for Dummies (74 page)

Caffeine

Alcohol

Notice how fruits and vegetables fall on the mood-supporting side? These foods also happen to be low-glycemic, which is just one more reason why following a low-glycemic diet can help with weight loss and overall well-being. Of course, embracing a low-glycemic diet is just one aspect of dealing with emotional eating. I cover some other steps you can take to begin tackling this issue in the next sections.

For some people, emotional eating may feel like a difficult challenge. If you're having trouble defeating this behavior, reach out to a therapist in your local area who specializes in emotional eating. The extra support may be a good fit for you.

Discover your triggers

Overcoming emotional eating is much easier when you understand what triggers the behavior for you. Perhaps your trigger is a stressful day at work, or maybe eating is how you've traditionally unwound in the evening. The trigger is different for every person, and it's not always clear what exactly it is.

To find out more about what drives your emotional eating, keep a detailed food record for at least one to two weeks. Include the following information in your entries:

The date and time (including the day of the week)

The food you ate

How much you ate

Your hunger level on a scale of 1 to 10 when you ate (1 being starving, 5 being neutral, 10 being stuffed)

What was going on for you in that moment

You may find that when you're bored in the evening you tend to go for something sweet, or that you generally eat more when you're happy or celebrating. Whatever you find, by discovering your responses you can create a new plan, breaking your old habits and forming new, healthy behaviors.

Find new healthy behaviors

Everyone has emotions and moods that they must deal with on a daily basis. Some are obvious, like a stressful day at work; others are subtle, like feeling disheartened because someone looked at you in a weird way and you're sure it's because of the outfit you chose. Everyone has different coping mechanisms for handling these feelings, and some, such as emotional eating, aren't as heay as others. The trick is to change your behavior to a healthier self-gratifying one. No matter what, you have to change the behavior so you have a new coping mechanism.

Your new healthy behavior must be something that's truly self-gratifying so it can easily take the place of the old behavior (in this case, emotional eating).

Here's an example of what I mean: A client of mine once discovered that she ate mindlessly in front of the television every night as a way of unwinding after work. She'd start with dinner and then continue eating sweets and other carbs into the late hours. After my client recognized that wanting to unwind from work was her emotional-eating trigger, she decided that instead of pigging out on sugary snacks, she'd portion out a low-glycemic treat such as popcorn or frozen yogurt and then write in her gratitude journal to help her remember all that was going well for her. This shift helped her to eat a reasonable, conscious treat and discover an alternate winding-down behavior so she didn't have to depend on the food/television combination.

Swapping healthier behaviors for emotional eating isn't a quick fix. First off, finding the right behavior to replace your emotional eating may take some trial and error. Second, you'll likely still have a desire to go back to your old habits. It'll take a great deal of practice until your new, healthier behavior feels like a comfortable old habit.