Food for bad mood days

[Amye44]

I suffer from cravings specially when I'm stressed or feeling down, I tend to eat a lot, sweets mostly to compensate my emotional needs. How can I please deal with that issue?

[YellowRose55]

Hi Amye44 and welcome to the weight loss forum.

Try looking at what sets you off with the emotional eating and try to break the habit. Only keep healthy food in the house if you can so when you start craving sweets when your stressed it will limit the damage.

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Good luck with your first week.

[Amye44 in reply to YellowRose55]

Thank you 😊

[IvanTheHorrible Maintainer]

Have you identified what your emotional needs are, and whether you have options to actually fix them? What do you think causes your "bad mood days"? It's always hard to look at core problems and try to deal with them, but papering them over causes us worse problems in the long run.

The simplest way to avoid eating lots of sweets is to just not have them in the house. Make sure you never go to the supermarket hungry and you're less likely to be tempted to buy them! As a substitute, I would really recommend Greek yoghurt (as I've mentioned elsewhere). The full-fat stuff, not the weird "diet" version. Your body is much better at regulating fat intake than sweet/starchy stuff (which most people can eat until they explode) so you're less likely to gorge on it. Add a drizzle of honey and nuts and pretend you're on holiday in the Med

[BridgeGirl Administrator 2 stone in reply to IvanTheHorrible]

Good suggestions

[Amye44 in reply to IvanTheHorrible]

Thank you for your reply😊 .My emotional problem is work/study stress in college plus loneliness. But I'm trying to beat it all step by step.

[IvanTheHorrible Maintainer in reply to Amye44]

You mean you're working AND studying at the same time? Yup, that's going to be stressful. There's probably no easy way around that, but if I can make one more suggestion: throw away the TV. Maybe you don't watch much anyway, but you'll find it'll solve several of your problems all at once:

- TV is likely to make you feel MORE lonely and stressed if you watch shows full of people (superficially) having a good time ... or soaps full of sturm und drang.

- TV is an immense waste of time. You could be working out, cooking something nice, or chatting with your family - all of those activities reduce stress. There's also the license cost: 12.50 a month buys you an organic Aberdeen Angus steak, which in my book at least counts as serious comfort food.

- Having no TV forces you to find other things to do, which means (a) you'll get more satisfaction from life and (b) you'll become a more interesting person. If you take up sky-diving or gardening or creative writing it'll put you in contact with like-minded people who will enjoy your company.

Also ... just wondering if you actually do "eat a lot", or whether you're just feeling guilty because you don't eat the tiny meals endorsed by the public health mafia. Have you noticed that the guardians of public morality simultaneously ridicule supermodels for eating rabbit-sized portions while excoriating everyone else for eating too much? Eating a good-sized meal isn't a sin. Just make sure you don't heap up your plate with things that make you fat (basically pasta, bread, potatoes and rice), and replace them with proper meat and veg. You'll feel a lot happier and less inclined to snack.

[Amye44 in reply to IvanTheHorrible]

Thank you for your help. Good advices !! 😊

[meggasaur94]

I comfort eat badly so I can completely get where you’re coming from. For me, there wasn’t just one thing that helped:

- Started off by swapping snacks for chewy and a pint of water, drinking helps keep the hunger at bay and gets the cups in!

- I meditate (with Headspace app. It’s free and really useful)

- learnt Crochet to keep my hands busy

- exercise! As time went on, I was feeling more proud of my achievement to just do something! Exercise naturally squashes your appetite, but I didn’t want to undo my hard work.

Ultimately though, you’ll need to try and tackle what the issues are head on. Even acknowledging them might help and the above just stopped me from slipping backwards as o went on.

Good luck! There is definitely a way for you to overcome this, you just need to find your way ☺️ xx

[Amye44 in reply to meggasaur94]

Thank you ☺