Comfort eating is often misconstrued as a problem behind weight issues, but it is essential to understand what it truly is. It involves using food to manage emotions rather than eating in response to genuine hunger, often stemming from childhood associations with food as a source of comfort. Recognizing and addressing comfort eating can empower individuals to regain control over their eating habits.

1. The Truth About Comfort
Eating

2. Comfort eating is cited as being an
issue lying behind somebody’s
weight problem.

3. However, it’s important to be aware
as to exactly what comfort eating
is and what it isn’t. If comfort eating
is a problem for you, then being
aware of what’s going on will help
you have power over it and feel
more in control.

5. From the dawn of history, food and
good times have been linked.

6. It’s not comfort eating to enjoy
eating a bit of birthday cake at your
friend’s party, even though eating
the cake will be associated with
feeling happy and will be part of the
general fun of the celebration.

8. The problem here comes when you
try to capture the feeling associated
with a party by eating party food
even when you’re not celebrating
anything – that is comfort eating.

9. There is also a physical side to
the link between food and
emotions.

11. When we are low on blood sugar
and hungry, we tend to feel pretty
terrible. It varies from person to
person..

12. but when we haven’t eaten for a
while, we get grumpy, snappy, more
prone to worry, a bit more emotional
and prone to tearfulness and so
forth.

13. Where comfort eating comes in is
when we use food as a way to help
us feel better when we feel
tired, irritable, stressed or upset for
some other reason, i.e. when
hunger isn’t the cause of our bad
temper and anxiety.

14. Our childhood experiences
and things that happened in the
past can also have an effect on
the way we view food and the way
it makes us feel.

15. Often, this is one of the things that
will be explored in a hypnotherapy
session for weight loss.

16. Eating is an
obvious
pleasure for
children and
parents often use it
as a tool to help
their children
learn.

17. Food can also be used by parents
as a comforting tool and as a way of
showing love.

18. This combination of giving food as
well as comfort can continue long
past infancy, and a parent can give
a hurt or sad child food (which
usually tends to be sweet – I’ve
never heard of a parent giving a
crying child cheese) along with the
cuddle to “cheer you up and make
you feel better”.

19. This behaviour may linger when we
are adults, and we may seek out
sweets as a comfort if we can’t get
the cuddles.

21. If you think you are suffering from
this bad behaviour, ask help now…

22. Learn more about the downside of
comfort eating at
http://positivetranceformations.com.
au