How to Avoid Emotional Eating After Bariatric Surgery
Those with excessive weight issues tend to have a best friend that might as well be the devil in disguise. This “friend” hangs out on your shoulder with his little red pitchfork and whispers in your ear when you’re at your most vulnerable. This “friend” excites all your senses and fills the void of boredom and sadness when you’re all alone.
Only this “friend” is not a friend at all – it’s name is food and your dependency on it may have caused a number of problems in your life – enough to warrant weight loss surgery.
Today, we’re talking about emotional eating following bariatric surgery. If you’re like most of us, you can relate to heading to the pantry in our time of need. Emotional eating is anytime you find yourself eating without the purpose satisfying physical hunger – in other words, eating in excess of what your body needs, often leading to weight gain.
You may feel more confident and happy after bariatric surgery – our hope is that you’re absolutely loving you new lifestyle. But nobody is immune to feelings of anxiety and unhappiness that welcome emotional eating habits back into our lives. Here are some steps you can take to avoid creeping back into emotional eating habits:
Find a new place to hang out:
If your common leisure areas around the house are near the kitchen it could be enabling for an emotional eating habit. According to Larascopic.md, part of breaking emotional eating habits is breaking your “pre-surgery routine.” They say that if you find yourself in the kitchen in times of heightened anxiety, do something different and replace your habit with “life-affirming” activities, i.e. go for a walk or perform some stretches.
Only eat when you’re physically hungry:
This sounds simpler than it is as emotional eating is essentially an addiction. But part of breaking an addiction is being self aware and honest with yourself when the habit is on full display. You can do this by asking yourself questions to determine the reasoning for your eating before you take that first bite. Questions like, “am I really hungry?” or “am I eating because I’m feeling emotional or have nothing to do?” can trigger your mind into a level consciousness that allow you to make a decision to stop and do something different in the moment.
Plan a routine for your food consumption:
Have you ever noticed that you get hungry at very specific points of the day? Your body gets used to that midnight snack, the afternoon bag of chips, or mid-morning donut and craves it craves those extra foods at specific times in the day because it’s what you’ve trained your body to do. Humans are creatures of habit. Putting your meal consumption on a consistent schedule allows your body to adapt and trigger feelings of hunger only when necessary and on the proper clock.
Remember that a quality multivitamin is absolutely essential to maintaining your health post bariatric surgery. Vitamins help replenish the nutrients your body struggles to absorb post surgery. Vita4life Multivitamins provide many key vitamins and minerals needed to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Make Vita4life Multivitamins apart of your health regimen today!