At the start of a new year, we’re bombarded with health information. Some people tell us to start this new, exciting, “long-term solution” diet. Others tell us we don’t need to diet. And some tell us that we just need to make small and consistent “lifestyle changes”. All of these messages can make it darn right confusing as to how we can improve our health. 

Research tells us that weight-loss doesn’t work for the majority. Whether it’s jazzed up a ‘lifestyle’ but is still selling weight loss, it’s a diet. Sadly, 80% of people who lose weight regain it (and often more) by 5 years (1).

I’m not here to ruin your fun and I am not anti-weight loss. Rather, I anti-pursuit of weight loss as I have witnessed the miserable side effects of pursuing it – there is also a load of research that have identified these miserable side effects too. 

I therefore, believe it’s important for you to understand whether you are subconsciously wrapped up in a diet. To understand the damaging effects of dieting, and to be able to point out who is selling you a diet, before jumping into the next diet trap. 

So, are you subconsciously wrapped up in a diet? 

Well sadly, diet culture is everywhere. It teaches us that we’re not good enough as we are. That we have to live a life of constant monitoring, controlling our bodies, restricting ourselves, and over exercising. It promises that when we’re thinner, we will fit in, be smarter, happier, more loveable and more worthy. 

We can see how prominent it is when we look at different types of eating personalities.  

Firstly, there is the Careful Eater. This can be someone who thinks they’re not following a specific diet, but instead chooses a certain food because they think it is healthier than something else. 

This person may scrutinise food labels or seek reassurance from a waiter in a restaurant that a meal is prepared exactly as they like it (I.e.: is it grilled rather than fried?). The Careful Eater can spend most of their days thinking about what they’re going to eat and even become a little anxious about it.  

The problem with this type of eating is that while it’s great to make informed food choices, it can adversely affect your relationship with food and your body. If you’re only eating “safe” foods and not really what you care for, it can lead to bingeing episodes later on due to deprivation of what you actually want to eat. 

The second eating personality is the Professional Dieter. As you’d imagine, this person can be easily identified. They’re the ones who are clued up on the latest dieting trends. They can tell you calorie content of most foods. They are then always pursuing another diet after the previous one didn’t work out. They diet and eat for the pursuit of weight loss, rather than health.

It’s not unusual for this person to engage in Last Supper eating (I.e: bingeing on foods that they don’t think they’ll ever be allowed to eat again) and starting their new diet the next day with a “clean slate”.  

The problem with this is that chronic dieting is not an effective or scientifically proven method to lose weight. In fact, it is a surefire way to develop other harmful effects such as disordered eating, slowed metabolism and decreased mental health.  

The final eating personality is the Unconscious Eater. As the name would suggest, this person will eat while being distracted by something else, such as watching television or being on their phone. There are sub–types under this category.  

The Chaotic Unconscious Eater is the busy person whose life is so hectic that they’ll eat anything that’s available at the time. They can go for long stints without eating and whenever they finally do eat, they’re ravenous. They can end up losing the ability to recognise biological hunger signals. 

The Refuse-Not Unconscious Eater is someone who will eat food that’s in sight regardless of hunger and are usually unaware of what or how much they’re eating. Attending cocktail parties or buffet style events can be tough for this group. 

The Waste-Not Unconscious Eater is the person who will not leave anything on their plate to ensure they can get as much value for money as they can. It can be common for this person to eat other people’s leftovers to ensure nothing is wasted.  

The Emotional Unconscious Eater eats food to soothe an emotion, whether it’s sadness, loneliness or frustration. This person often thinks that eating is the problem as opposed to getting to the root cause that’s driving them to eat in the first place. The problem with being any subtype of Unconscious Eater is that it can lead to overeating. A classic example is having a large packet of crisps at your desk while writing a report and before you know it, the packet is empty because you were completely engaged in the report writing, rather than the eating.

It is not anyone’s fault that they have become one or several of these types. This is the effect of living in a society where there is a $66 billion weight loss industry out there profiting from the people who will do anything to pursue their “ideal” body (2). 

And this industry continues to thrive because the same people go back again and again. That’s because the diet or weight loss aid failed them… not because of their lack of willpower as diet culture would have you believe. 

Does any of this sound familiar to you? 

If so, rejecting diets and becoming more of an Intuitive Eater may be best for you. 

An Intuitive Eater is able to make choices based on biological hunger and make food choices without experiencing guilt, or an ethical dilemma. They honour their hunger, respect their fullness and enjoy the pleasures of eating.

How do you spot diet culture? 

Unfortunately, there has been a recent trend of “health professionals” claiming under false pretences to be non-diet. They talk about body positivity and “anti-diet this” and “non–diet that”, which seems legitimate, when in actual fact is not.

Instead, they still push dieting and weight loss. This is a problem, when we know the side effects of any pursuit of weight loss are pretty miserable. 

In order to help shed some light on how to spot diet–culture, I have identified some key phrases. These are notoriously used by these people who are trying to sound like they’re not selling diets, but actually are. 

• This is a “wellness approach”  
• “It’s a lifestyle not a diet” 
• “This food is ‘good’ and this food is ‘bad’” 
• “You can only have X serving size and amount of meals/snacks/points in one day” 
• “You can only have X grams of carbs/fat/protein per day” 
• “You can only eat at certain times of the day” 
• “Detox your fridge”  
• “This is a cleanse in a healthy way” 
• “You only have to eliminate x, y, z foods for 30 days to change your life”  
• “Let’s work together to shift habits” 
• “This is all about clean, energising eating” 

So essentially, if it looks like a diet, sounds like a diet and smells like a diet, it’s most likely a diet. And it’s important that we call these people out. The reason being that even if you have the best intentions of stopping dieting, you could still have a little bit of unconscious diet mentality (called Psuedo-dieting). This could make you susceptible to the diet trap.  

But this is not your fault. This is the effect of the insidious diet culture we live in.  

That’s why we need to make sure you can spot diet culture being perpetuated by people cashing in on it. Together, we can call them out, and help the world to see that dieting is not the answer.  

For more on ending dieting and how to start intuitive eating, check out my FREE download. 

References 

1. Anderson, James W., et al. “Long-term weight-loss maintenance: a meta-analysis of US studies–.” The American journal of clinical nutrition 74.5 (2001): 579-584.
2. Rothblum, E. D. (2018). Slim chance for permanent weight loss. Archives of Scientific Psychology, 6(1), 63-69. doi:10.1037/arc0000043

How to stop emotional eating

Are you sick of out of control eating and wonder how you can just “stop emotional eating forever?”

It often starts by digging through the fridge or cupboard, moves onto picking at a few crackers, and then the cheese, and before you know it you are elbow deep in ice-cream.

You go to bed feeling uncomfortable, sick and accompanied by guilt, shame. Worst of all, the initial uncomfortable emotion that triggered it all (perhaps stress, anger, loneliness) hasn’t really gone away.

This is a classic case of emotional eating and in this article I am going to share with you how to stop emotional eating forever!

Actually, not quite. Let’s get something straight. Emotional eating is not inherently bad or wrong. If you think about it, it’s probably been one of the best coping mechanisms you have had available to you so far. So it’s has served a purpose and actually helped you take care of yourself when you’ve needed that comfort. It’s also a pretty benign coping mechanism. After all, there are worse things going on in the world than eating a heap of food in one sitting – the world is unlikely to cave in.

However, I appreciate you are here for tools to help. I am a Registered Dietitian working with those who experience emotional eating, anxiety eating and feeling guilty after eating. I have outlined below a number of potential causes. I offer some suggestions on how to stop emotional eating and how to start intuitive eating. 

So what are the possible causes?

1)    Firstly, you have to rule out actual physical hunger

I know this may sound obvious, but in my practice, I frequently see clients who consider themselves emotional eaters. However, when we dive into their eating patterns, it quickly becomes apparent that their episodes of emotional eating are driven by hunger (at least partly).

In addition, some are denying, ignoring, or not actually able to feel their hunger. This results in blood sugar levels dropping, which can manifest in anxiety, stress or feeling irritable. So when hunger manifests, it’s coupled with the anxiety, stress, irritability.  It’s pretty understandable to be scoffing down the first thing in site. In can sometimes feel like a binge. 

2)    Check in with yourself – are you really satisfied?

Whether it’s food, relationships or our career, if we are not satisfied, we are not happy. To find satisfaction in the food we eat, the meal needs to be something we enjoy and actually want to eat.

It’s no good denying the pudding just to be ‘good’ if you find yourself scoffing a whole pack of biscuits the minute you return home. Equally, it’s no good eating the green salad when you really wanted a warming bowl of pasta. It’s likely that you will finish the meal unsatisfied and looking for other foods to satisfy your taste buds. So eating when you are not hungry is often mistaken for emotional eating, when it’s not entirely. It’s just a natural response to feeling unsatisfied by the foods you are eating.

Equally, if you imagine an experience you’ve had where you have eaten to push down your emotions. Again, it’s not a very satisfying experience, leaving you wanting to eat more. You are filling up your emotional hunger (as opposed to physical hunger), you will ultimately not feel very satisfied.

3)    Okay, you have realised it’s not hunger or the fact you are not satisfied… and you are still struggling?

As I mentioned before, emotional eating is not inherently bad or abnormal. We all have an emotional connection to food. Food is love, comfort, reward and a reliable friend. Sometimes it becomes our only friend, and when we consider how emotionally charged food is, this is completely understandable.

So when is it really a problem?

Emotional eating is only really a problem if you rely entirely on food to soothe your emotions and you have no other coping mechanisms.

So what can you do about it?

1)    Start reframing your thinking.

Rather than thinking negatively, try to look at your eating habits without judgement. Look at your habits with curiosity. Ask yourself “how has emotional eating been helpful for me? What need has this met for me?”. Reflect on this, and only then can you start to build up your emotional coping toolkit.

2)    How to identify your emotions

Start by really understanding your emotional triggers. Cravings for a specific food, or simply a desire to eat can be triggered by a variety of feelings and situations. Using the emotional feelings wheel below is a useful tool to identify these feelings. Writing your feelings out, talking to a friend, counsellor, or just sitting with the feeling and experiencing it (as uncomfortable as that may be), can also be helpful to identify the feelings you are experiencing.

3)    The power of 3

Having a list of 3 simple and accessible alternatives can be a handy way to deal with your feelings when they arise. This will reduce your need to push them down with food. It could include; calling a friend, writing down your feelings in a journal, letting yourself cry, breathing deeply, jumping around and shaking them off. Keep the list somewhere you can easily access it (e.g. your phone home screen).

We also sometimes eat through boredom, loneliness, fear or anxiety and simply distracting yourself can be a way to reduce overwhelm of trying to deal or feel the feelings in that instance. Reading a book, going for a drive, cleaning out a cupboard, doing a puzzle, taking a nap, playing on your phone or computer can also be great ways to distract yourself.

4)    Take care of yourself

Whilst some people learn from a young age that it’s okay to ask for a hug, or are taught how to look after themselves in productive and nurturing ways, some of us still need to discover unmet our needs. Some basic unmet needs can include; getting rest, expressing feelings, being intellectually and creatively stimulated, being heard, understood and accepted, receiving warmth and comfort, and being sensually stimulated.

Ginger Kara has created this self-care diagram which is an excellent demonstration of ways in which you could nurture yourself so that food loses its number one position in this role.

Remember, emotional eating is not inherently bad. It’s simply your body’s way of telling you that it needs something. We shouldn’t be driving to eradicate it as we will be fighting a losing battle. Rather, we should be pausing and asking questions like

“am I hungry?”

“What am I feeling?”

“What do I need?”

These needs can sometimes be met without food, you just have to find it. It’s okay for food to still be one of these coping mechanisms, just try not to let it be the only mechanism.

Your relationship with food will become more positive as you begin to let go of it as a single coping mechanism, and bring it back into your life as a pleasurable and calm experience.

For more on how to emotional eating, how to stop food obsession, how to stop binge-eating, stress eating, yo-yo dieting, and how to start intuitive eating check out my short course. This will guide you through some of the first steps to support you through your food problems. You will learn how to stop food obsession, and how to start intuitive eating. 

If you’re struggling with your mental health, and this is affecting your day to day life, another way you can get support is through talk therapy. Visit BetterHelp to learn more about how talk therapy can help you develop healthy habits.

Have you ever tried to cut back your sugar intake? If you find yourself unable to stay away from the sweet stuff and thinking “I can’t stop eating sugar”, you are not alone.

I am sure many of us know that intense desire to eat a specific food despite not feeling physically hungry. There are a number of reasons that make stopping eating sugar difficult. I have already delved into why you don’t need to stop eating sugar to improve your health in another post. Whilst sugar is fine to include in your diet, feeling out of control around it is not fun. In this article, I am going to share with you my eight top tips to help you get to grips with sugar cravings and figure out “why can’t I stop eating sugar”.

Note: many of my clients feel they are binge eating on sugar or other foods, when in fact they are eating a fairy normal amount of food. A binge can be very subjective. Binge eating is the consumption of large quantities of food in a very short period of time. This could be more eating a higher volume of food than the average person would be able to consume in one day, in a very short space of time. It’s quite often planned and ritualised. 

1) Get curious about your cravings 

Can you pick up any specific patterns to when you find yourself wanting sugary foods. Is there a particular time of day when you find yourself asking “why can’t I stop eating chocolate”? For example, if it’s chocolate, what type of chocolate do you crave? Is there a time of day that this strikes most? Naming a brand and flavour, and identifying the times of day that you find most difficult may come in handy over the next few paragraphs. If you’re not sure, you could try keeping a little journal to identify patterns.

2) Tune in with your hunger 

I quite often hear that cravings for particular foods or binge eating episodes occur at 3-4pm in the afternoon. When I hear a history of what a client’s eaten that day (perhaps cereal/porridge for breakfast, and a salad for lunch) they have often not eaten enough. It’s no wonder they are hungry and craving sugar. Check in with what you’ve eaten throughout the day and allow yourself a proper snack. That could be biscuits and a yoghurt, or a dash of Nutella on toast with a banana if you are looking for that sugar hit. Combining a little sugar with some more nutrient dense food can be a good balance. Forbidding yourself from eating the sugary food can fuel cravings further, leading you to question “why can’t I stop eating sugar”. 

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3) Stop forbidding food and give yourself unconditional permission to eat ALL foods

It’s pretty hard to sell the idea of ‘eat what you want’ when you’re probably thinking – “that’s exactly what brought me here in the first place”. However, the alternative approach of restrictive diets and deprivation probably hasn’t worked either.

Feeling out of control around sugar (or any food you are restricting) is a natural reaction to deprivation/restriction. Foods are not good or bad. You are not a good person if you eat lettuce and a bad person if you eat chocolate. They are all just food. Neutralising your language around these foods can it down from its pedestal. If I say to you “don’t think of a pink elephant”, what pops into your head? It’s the same with food. If we tell ourselves we can’t have something then we end up wanting it more and this is a scientifically proven concept! 

Write out a list of foods that you forbid yourself to eat and start experimenting with them. Take one at a time a few days apart. As you eating your forbidden food, slow down, savour it and tune into how much you need to feel satisfied.

As you become more comfortable with this practice of eating your ‘forbidden’ food, the foods become more ordinary and truly allowed. It’s a process called habituation. The food no longer has any moral value and doesn’t have control over you.

4) Identify emotional triggers 

A lot of us use food to quash unpleasant emotions that we’d rather not feel. This is normal to some extent, but when food becomes our only coping mechanism it often doesn’t feel great. Sugar-rich foods can be particularly comforting. If you find yourself wanting to dive into a tub of ice-cream regularly when you know you’re not physically hungry, perhaps your body is trying to tell you it needs something else. If emotional eating is something you struggle with then an important part of figuring out how to stop bingeing on sweets will be learning to cope with these emotions without food. You can get more in-depth tips on emotional eating in this article. 

5) Eat regular, satisfying meals and snacks

Often the answer to “why do I binge on sugar?” is because of not eating regularly. When we get overly hungry, our bodies are biologically more likely to crave high sugar foods to get the quick energy hit they need. Eating every 3-5 hours, with 3 meals and 2-3 snacks in a day is what many people find works for them. It’s important to recognise what works best for you and to tune into your own hunger cues.

Some people struggle to initially hear hunger and fullness cues, so regular eating can help to “get the machine churning” again. This can create a rhythm from which you can tune into those signals again.

As well as physically filling you up, your meals and snacks need to mentally and physically satisfy you so that you do not feel restricted (remember: restriction leads to bingeing). This means choosing foods that we crave or that “hum” to us. To make sure we get physical satisfaction from food, it’s important to choose options with “staying power”. These are usually those which include a source of each fat, protein, carbohydrate, and fibre.

6) Pack your snacks

Of course, the office chocolates or vending machine look more appealing than the brown squashed banana or bruised apple at the bottom of your bag. To combat this, pack tasty and delicious snacks that you look forward to eating. This way may be less likely to have to resort to the vending machine come 3pm.

You could try:

– oat cakes with nut butter and squashed berries or banana

– leftover dinner! 

– cream cheese, tomatoes and black pepper on some delicious toasted bread

– yoghurt with fruit

– muesli/granola bar with fruit

– peanut butter and banana

7) Get on top of your sleep

Tiredness makes cravings more intense, especially for fatty and sugary food. Your body is less likely to be giving out accurate hunger signals when tired. So stick to eating regularly, bite the bullet and get yourself into bed early! 7-9 hours per night is optimal. Any less than that and your hunger signals will likely be out-of-whack. If you’re keen to dive into this more, the book “Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker is excellent. 

In summary

When you find yourself asking “why can’t I stop eating  sugar”, it can be your bodies way of telling you that it needs something. It could be hungry, over-restricted, feeling an intense emotion, not fed/watered or had enough sleep. Perhaps it needs a little self-love. Tune into your body’s signals, reflect and try to learn from them so you are able to give your body what it truly desires.

For more on how to stop binge eating sugar, how to stop food obsession, emotional eating, stress eating, yo-yo dieting, and how to start intuitive eating check out my FREE download. This will guide you through some of the first steps to support you through your food problems. You will learn how to stop food obsession, and how to start intuitive eating. 

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