I'M STRUGGLING | EMOTIONAL EATING, CALORIE RESTRICTING & STRESS - Raw No...

Natural Relaxation Methods To Curb Stress That Leads To Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a dysfunctional form of using food to cope with stress, and various difficult feelings, such as boredom, pain, anger, and loneliness. If emotional eating is something you struggle with you might not be surprised to hear that food is not a solution and can eating behind your emotions can lead to serious medical and mental health problems such as obesity, overweight and depression.

If you are overweight or obese, it is time to take a hard and long look at your eating patterns and to see how food temporarily helps you to avoid negative feelings and emotions, but does not really solve the root of the problem. That ice cream may feel really good going down at the moment, but likely after the binge is over, your distress remains and you probably feel even worse than before because of post-binge guilt and shame.

If food truly relaxes you and you recognize that in yourself, it stands to reason that there may be other, healthier ways of dealing with stress through other relaxation techniques that will eventually take the place of emotional eating. 

Here are some relaxation techniques you can use instead of emotional overeating that can help you get on a path to better health:

·        

      Meditation. 

      The art of relaxing your body completely and focusing on your breath and your mind can cause the same release of feel-good hormones in your brain that occurs when you eat junk food, except it has absolutely zero negative effects. There are many types of meditation methods and it may take some time for you to learn the techniques that will help you the best. Learning meditation and practising it daily can eliminate the impact of stressors in your life so you can finally quit eating to overcome stress.

·         Visualization. 

      This is similar to meditation except that you use your mind to “see” yourself making good food choices and being thinner as a result. If you are overweight or obese because of your eating habits, you can use visualization to help you establish a thin body image of yourself that is unencumbered by the constant need to eat in order to feel relaxed.

·         Exercise. 

      When you exercise for relaxation, you are not simply trying to burn calories but you are trying to find some source of happiness in simply being more active. Exercise can be a simple part of your daily life; you don’t have to be a star jogger or world-class athlete. Taking a simple walk around the block before dinner can relax your body so that you are only eating for good health and because you are hungry from exercise. Exercise releases positive endorphins in the brain that makes us feel better, and is an all-natural stress reducer that also has zero negative side effects.

·         Tai chi. 

      Tai chi is an ancient form of Chinese martial arts that has been found to be a great source of relaxation for many Westerners as well. Tai chi involves going through a series of martial arts type of movements done at a slow and fluid pace. The practice of Tai chi will not only relax you but it will burn calories and give you a better posture and better balance. It can be practiced by people of just about any fitness level.

·         Yoga. 

      There are many different types of yoga you can practice. Some are specifically designed for relaxation and comfort so you feel less of an urge to eat for comfort. Others are more strenuous, involving more complex poses that, when combined with meditation and breathing, serve to relax you and improve your level of well-being.

·         Qi Gong. 

      This is another practice we Westerners have picked up from ancient traditional Chinese medicine. It is similar to tai chi but is not as taxing. You use qi gong to enhance the flow of vital qi energy through your body to encourage balance of self, to feel better about yourself and live a healthier life without overeating. 

Any of these measures, when practiced daily, can help you improve your quality of life and can replace the negative habit of emotional eating and making poor food choices. Try them and you might be surprised at how effective they can be.  

How To Stop Binge Eating And Emotional Eating Once And For All

Loneliness And Emotional Overeating

Too often, we eat in order to cope with unhealthy emotions. Food begins to become the focus of our social life and we eat in order to feel better. Unfortunately, none ever eats carrots and lettuce behind their emotion; it is typically unhealthy junk food. This can lead to overeating, obesity, and all of the many complications of being obese. It also leads to emotional and sometimes even mental issues like major depression.

Some people choose to eat because they are lonely. Loneliness and boredom can settle in when we don’t socialize with others and we believe that food will fill up the emptiness we feel. Technically, food does fill us up; however, it doesn't fill us up in the way we would like it to.

We instead feel physically overstuffed yet still emotionally lonely and sad in the end. Rather than feeling physically and emotionally better, we end up becoming overweight and unhappy about our physical appearance—and still isolated and lonely. In fact, binging behind emotions actually makes us feel worse because it adds guilt and shame on top of an already emotional state.

Food can release endogenous “feel good” hormones in the brain called endorphins. Endorphins can give us a sense of well-being that is similar to the feelings of well-being brought about by the taking of certain drugs, like narcotics and anti-anxiety medication. The problem is that the endorphin rush we experience from eating doesn't last and we need to continue to eat more in order to feel better. It becomes a never-ending cycle of eating, getting endorphins, and wanting more so we eat again. The same exact cycle is seen in drug and alcohol addiction.

Coping with Loneliness without Food

Loneliness just doesn't happen to us without our own consent. When you feel lonely, rather than reaching into the refrigerator or pantry for food, you need to reach out to others who can help allay the feelings of loneliness. This might mean calling a friend to talk with them on the phone, going to visit someone in their home, or making a small meal or coffee in order to invite someone over.

People can’t always intuitively know you are lonely unless you reach out and tell them. You never know what might happen. The person you reach out to may be feeling lonely, too, and you can help both of you at once.

Try to eat with at least one other person. This makes the meal a more social experience in which you can spread out the meal with conversation and slower eating habits. Eating socially helps you be more mindful about your eating and you will make more healthy food choices. 

So when you are reaching in the freezer for a carton of ice cream to deal with loneliness, ask yourself if there is someone you can call to share the ice cream with. Give them a call and share your feelings with the person. If they can’t come over right away, set a date or time when you can meet with them and share ice cream or even a restaurant meal with them. It might be enough to connect you to the other person long enough to have the urge to splurge on ice cream dissipate. The anticipation of meeting up with a friend or relative, even if it is not now, can help us feel less lonely.

Food and Loneliness

Unfortunately, when we are lonely, we tend to make the wrong food choices. We eat foods that are too rich, filled with sugar or loaded with salt and. If you have to eat something to fill up a lonely space in your heart, consider doing so with heart-healthy foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.

Avoid processed foods from the grocery store as they contain preservatives you don’t need. Try to choose something that is not ready made—in other words, something you have to prepare in order to eat.

The hobby of cooking can relieve lonely feelings so you can cook to feel better both emotionally and physically. Don’t fall into bad eating habits just to cope with negative feelings and decide to choose foods that will fill you up in a healthier way.  

Key Coping Skills To Acquire To Stop Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is when food is used to soothe with difficult emotions. It is one of the most common ways that people use to feel better when undergoing a stressor or when faced with uncomfortable emotions.

Eating as a way of coping with problems is common and yet it is easy to forget that the eating of comfort foods doesn’t ever solve the real underlying issues. You will still be left with negative emotions and will add to that the guilt you feel because you over-ate. 

There are some coping strategies you can use to feel better that doesn’t include the eating of unhealthy foods. Here are some things you can do to stop emotional eating:

·         Because emotional eating is usually about eating certain kinds of “comfort foods,” choose to shop and select foods at the supermarket when you are not under stress and will be less likely to have emotional foods to bring home from the market. When these foods are unavailable to you or hard to get, you are less likely to eat impulsively and may turn to something besides food in order to feel better.

• Identify those things that trigger emotional eating. Your awareness of these triggers alone can help you avoid triggers and can allow you to recognize when you feel “hungry” because of your emotions. Have a repertoire of other things you can do to change your behavior and our feelings that don’t involve food, a therapist can really be helpful in learning healthy coping skills.

• Keep a diary or journal around your emotions and eating. That way you can better identify which things trigger unhealthy eating and which foods you are choosing to eat when you are under stress. In emotional eating, awareness is half the battle. Write down your moods as they arise and think of non-food choices you can make rather than eating. Sometimes the food craving comes first. Write down the food craving you have and take the time to understand what the trigger for the craving was in much as detail as possible. For example, if you had a bad day at work, and instead of having a healthy dinner, you choose to eat potato chips and ice cream, this tells you that stress triggers you to eat junk food. Deal with the trigger directly instead of stuffing it into your mouth. Look for specific patterns of eating and emotions so they can be circumvented in the future. 

·         Think about non-food ways to handle your stressors. Too many people who are trying to lose weight fail to take into account the emotional eating part of their lives. Just because you know that a tub of ice cream has many calories in it doesn’t mean you won’t reach for it when you feel triggered by stressors. Think of other rewards you can give yourself when you are happy as well as when you need comforting. It might be something you buy for yourself that is not food or a phone call you make to a good friend instead of eating. Even a short walk can help put your stressors into perspective without having to resort to food.

·         Take a break between the times you feel the urge to eat some kind of comfort food and the actual eating process. You may find the urge to eat passes if you just wait a little while. Emotional eating often involves a fast desire to eat and intense cravings. If you give yourself a chance to put your emotions into perspective, you may not even feel like eating the comfort food or you will eat less. You will have more time to make a different choice around the trigger or stressor.

·         Accept your feelings for what they are, whether they are good or bad feelings. Know that you are emotionally eating because you have no control over your feelings rather than having no control over your eating. Identify and accept how you feel, allowing it to settle in as comfortably as the feeling can and allow the feeling to stand for itself rather than trying to run away from it. If you are sad, recognize it, own it, and let it out in a healthy and more forthright way than simply eating to hide the emotion. Even if you can’t help it and you eat anyway, at least you’ll understand why it is happening and will try to avoid the same pattern in the future.

·         Practice healthier lifestyle habits. This means taking care that you get enough to sleep at night and that you exercise at least a little bit when you are under stress. Don’t overestimate the value of resting or taking a short nap when you are stressed out. 

Eating and stress do not have to go together. There are ways you can cope with stress and negative emotions that do not involve food. Once you know what these coping strategies are, you will naturally eat less and will feel a stronger disconnect between emotions and eating.

Maurice  

Is Junk Food Your Drug Of Choice?

Just how far away is junk food eating from other forms of addiction, like the taking of illicit drugs or drinking too much alcohol? Not very far, say nutritionists and healthcare professionals. Eating junk food can lead to health problems and emotional problems that are not unlike any other addiction.

Normally, when we eat, we take a signal in the form of “ghrelin”—a hormone secreted by the stomach in response to hunger. It tells the brain that it is time to eat. When the body receives enough food, the fat cells release “leptin”—also known as the satiety hormone. It tells your brain that you have eaten enough and you stop eating. People who use junk food as part of an abnormal eating pattern do not pay enough attention to these signals and they tend to overeat, stuffing themselves with junk food.

Rather than paying attention to ghrelin and leptin, junk food eaters are eating for the rush of positive feelings associated with eating food high in fat, salt, or sugar. When you eat these kinds of foods under stress or distress, the food has the capability of releasing endorphins in the brain. Endorphins are the feel-good chemicals that give us a temporary rush or a feeling of well-being when we eat certain foods. Temporarily, we feel happy. Unfortunately, you must keep feeding your body in order to re-experience the “high” that eating junk food has caused.

The Cycle of Endorphins

This cycle of eating and releasing endorphins is no different from the cycle experienced by heroin addicts that use heroin as a mimicker of endorphins in the brain. Heroin and other illicit drugs either release endorphins from the brain or act as endorphins themselves. When you eat junk foods, especially when you are sad, angry, lonely, or depressed, there is a temporary release of endorphins from the brain, which reinforces the negative pattern of eating too much on a repetitive basis. The vulnerability that is created by these distressful emotions makes the “food high” much more gratifying, because the euphoric feelings are much stronger than they may be for one who is not in distress, this is the hallmark of the addictive process.

Certain foods release endorphins better than others, such as high salt, high fat and high sugar foods. When you eat these types of foods, you feel temporarily better and you keep eating in order to continue to feel better. This process need only occur once to become completely engrained in the mind creating a psychological imprint that makes the emotional eater return to food repeatedly during times of distress for that gratification.

Because emotional overeating is such a powerful stimulus to the brain, centres like Overeater’s Anonymous have sprung up. These programs teach you the emotional reasons why you overeat and why you make poor food cycles. Like any twelve step program, you relinquish the power you don’t really have in the first place to a higher power and learn better eating habits. You come to learn what the triggers are in your life that has led to poor eating habits and eating too much. In the fellowship, you will find others who share your problem can be very helpful in getting out of the cycle of junk food eating, obesity, and feeling bad, guilty, or angry with yourself for having eaten the wrong foods. 

Junk foods especially have a high addiction potential. In such cases, junk food can be high salt foods like potato chips, snack crackers, or popcorn. They can also be high sugar foods, such as ice cream, cookies, and pastries. If you find yourself drawn to these types of foods, it is likely that you have more of a food addiction rather than using food as a normal part of fuelling your body.

Being Overweight

Few people are overweight because they have a glandular condition or a “low metabolism.” If you are overweight or obese, it is more likely that you have found food as your drug of choice and are using food to release endorphins in your brain, which make you feel better in situations where you would otherwise be angry, sad, bored, or depressed. Food becomes a way to feel better that has nothing to do with getting the right nutrients and eating a healthy quantity of foods that could be providing you with proper nutrition. 

STOP CRAVINGS || Eating Disorder to Finding Balance

Healthy Ways To Deal With Emotions That Lead To Overeating

Ideally, we eat when we receive signals from the brain that tell us we are hungry and we stop eating when other signals tell us we have reached a point of satiety. The signals cause the hormone, ghrelin, to be released by the stomach. Our “hunger hormone” increases one’s appetite. When we have eaten enough, the hormone called leptin is released by fat cells, telling us we our full so we stop eating. The different levels of these two hormones are how our hunger and satiety cycle should be controlled. 

Unfortunately, people who eat emotionally override these hormones and instead eat because they are sad, lonely, empty, angry, or anxious. In such cases, eating has become a tool to help us feel better and to diminish our negative feelings. When this happens, they no longer respond to leptin and eat even when they are full or when not technically hungry.

Essentially this becomes habit within the mind, and body. Every action has a reaction, so when an emotional eater feels stress, they reach for a cookie. When they feel bored, they reach for a bag of chips. When they feel lonely, they reach for ice cream. Many emotional eaters do not see this pattern as it becomes so engrained in their behavioural profile.

Eating Emotionally

Emotional eating often leads to overeating and secondary obesity. If you are a person who suffers from emotional eating, you eat according to how you feel instead of your hunger signals. You also tend to make poor food choices—eating potato chips, ice cream and other salty or sugary foods.

You may eat directly from the container and not stop until the container is empty. This often involves eating hundreds or thousands of calories in one sitting. The emotional eater cannot help but gain weight since their caloric intake is often off the chart.

Like drugs, food activates pleasure centres in the brain and doughnuts, candy, ice cream and chips are indeed addicting. Like the saying goes, “you can’t stop at just one,” add to that a state of emotional vulnerability and you have the perfect storm.

Skills To Decrease Emotional Overeating

There are things you can do to reduce the negative effects of emotional eating. Let’s look at some of these:

·         Recognize the connection. Once you recognize when you are eating because of emotions rather than eating for hunger alone, you can begin to realize the interplay between emotions and eating. This can lead to understanding your own triggers and the emotions involved, so you can deal with them in ways that are more positive.

·         Find out the emotion behind the eating. If you find yourself mindlessly eating a junk food, you are likely overeating due to emotions so that you can stop eating, even for a minute or two to recognize what your emotions are. Did you just have a fight with your loved ones and now are feeling residual anger or remorse? Are you feeling lonely? Are you using food to reward yourself for some type of success? Are you simply bored? When you know the emotion, you can deal learn how to deal with it or them in healthy ways and not with food.

·         Journal your thoughts. Pick up a pen and paper instead of a bag of potato chips. Write down in whatever detail you can exactly the emotions and thoughts that lead to binge eating. When you write things down in a journal, you can help to dissipate the magnitude of the emotions so you don’t feel so overwhelmed. You will naturally eat less.

·         Own your emotions and change your eating habits instead. If you still feel like eating because of your emotions, don’t eat right out of the package, whether eating out of the pie tin, the potato chip bag, or the carton of ice cream. Take the extra time to serve up a single serving of the food of your choice onto a plate or bowl. This forces you to eat only so much food at a time. When you recognize that the plate or bowl is empty, you may be tricking yourself into eating just one serving with the same emotional benefits you get from eating the entire amount of food.

Emotional eating can lead to complications of obesity, of which there are many. Following these tips, you can curb the amount of food you eat and you’ll have more room to eat healthier foods at mealtimes.  

Overcome Emotional Eating: The Road To Recovery

Emotional Overeating: Evaluating Your Coping Skills

Emotional eating involves eating in order to cope with life’s stresses. We tend to eat more of the wrong foods when we are under a great deal of stress and we eat in order to cope with both the negative and positive influences in our lives. When we eat emotionally, we make bad food choices; we eat in order to feel better. There are a lot of stress-reduction techniques that can help you cope without overeating.

For many emotional overeating is not simply an occasional occurrence, but in fact a chronic condition that can have devastating effects on well-being, self-esteem, body image, and physical health.

Awareness
The first step in combating this type of dysfunctional coping skill is awareness. Recognize when you are eating emotionally and try to understand which emotions are behind your poor eating.
·         Do you eat mindlessly when under increased stress, or when feeling anger, sadness, despair, boredom, or even happiness?
·         Is your eating a way to cope with negative feelings? 
·         Are your food choices tending toward junk food rather than healthy foods?
·         Do you binge eat?
·         Do you often feel guilt after eating?
All of these are signs that you are eating to curb or reinforce emotions rather than eating because you are hungry.
Because emotional eating often leads to poor food choices, overeating and obesity, it pays to recognize these connections and try to find coping skills that will take the place of emotional overeating.
When you arm yourself with healthy coping skills versus food, and you begin to utilize them, it will provide you with better choices, in still healthier habits, and eliminate the need to open up the refrigerator for some peace of mind and comfort.
Better Coping Skills
There are healthier coping skills to ease the pain of negative emotions than just overeating. Here are a few you might try:
·         Keep a journal about your feelings. When you journal about your feelings, you tend to be more clear about what’s going on in your life that might be triggering the overeating. The negative feelings tend to dissipate when you write them down and process them on paper. 
·         Try exercise. When you are stressed out or feeling negative emotions, try taking a walk or cycling a bit before deciding to eat. Even if the exercise doesn't curb your habit of emotional eating, you will burn calories and raise your metabolic rate so you will be less likely to gain weight from your eating habits. 
·         Take the time to meditate when you are under stress. Focusing on your breathing and relaxing your muscles for just fifteen minutes can refresh you and can lead to less stress in your mind. In many cases, you will come out of a meditative rest without the sudden urge to eat that you had before you meditated. Meditation can keep your mind sharp and less focused on the stresses that are pushing you to overeat.
·         When you eat, eat slowly. Even if you feel you must eat to dissipate negative emotions, take your time while eating. When you make time to eat slowly, you get the benefit of the food reward and give your satiety signals a chance to keep up and let you know when you are full. You will be less likely to overeat when you eat slowly.
·         Keep only healthy foods in the house. If you must cope by eating, make sure that the only choices you have immediately on hand are healthy choices. One of the hallmarks of emotional eating is irresistible and urging cravings for junk food that come out of nowhere, and so when you have your favourite junk food in the house it makes it much more difficult to resist. Reinforce your commitment to change by cleaning out the cupboards. You can dissipate anger by crunching on carrots in the same way as if you are crunching on potato chips. The habit is the same but you make healthier food choices in order to cope with your stresses. 
·         Pick up the phone to talk to someone. When you are pouring out your stresses to a second party, you will not have time to eat and you will be able to dissipate the strength of your feelings without eating. Talking to someone who listens intently will help you feel better without having to eat something. It is sometimes better to be filled with kindness and compassion rather than with empty calories. 

Weight Loss Kickstart

Getting Fit

10 Unhealthy Eating Habits

Ideally, food should be a source of bodily fuel and nothing more. When you eat for fuel, you make healthy food choices and you eat only enough to satisfy hunger.

People with unhealthy eating habits do not pay attention to the body’s normal biochemical hormones that tell us when we are hungry and when we are full. This is typically a major problem for emotional eaters that use food a coping tool for life’s problems and uncomfortable emotions.

Emotional eating can have devastating effects on one’s self-esteem and of course, food never solves any problems or alleviates feelings, instead eating behind emotions only piles more problems on top of what already exists. Many overeat unhealthy high fat foods while stressed, sad, lonely, or heartbroken. This reactionary habit of reaching for food when problems arise also leads to guilt, shame, and low self-esteem as the eater lacks the coping skills to deal with life in a healthy manner and intuitively knows that food is not a solution.

There are ways you can tell if you are eating healthy or unhealthy because those who as part of unhealthy habits will exhibit these ten signs of unhealthy eating—or at least most of them.

Here are ten unhealthy eating habits that anyone should avoid and are often indicators that one has an unhealthy relationship with food:

1. Eating in front of the television. When you sit down in front of the television to eat, the focus on what and how much you are eating is less than the focus of the television program and you tend to overeat, stuffing yourself rather than eating just to relieve hunger.
2.    Eating sugary or salty foods. These, along with foods that are high in fat, tend to be the comfort foods that provide you with a temporary sense of relief but that do not cause a lasting period of comfort. These foods are consumed in huge excess during times of stress, sadness, loneliness, or as a way to cope with any problem or uncomfortable situation that may occur in your life. You tend to go back for more just to feel comfortable again.
3. You eat most of your food later at night. In such cases, food has become a way to cope with daily stressors. You skip breakfast, eat a light lunch and, when the stressors of the day have piled up, you take out your armamentarium of food sources in order to comfort the body and mind, rather than just to fill your stomach. Food eaten at night is eaten when your metabolic state is lower so more of this food goes to fat.
4.  You prefer to eat alone. Deep down, you know what you are doing is unhealthy so rather than have food as part of a social experience, food is your guilty pleasure to be taken when you are by yourself and when no one is around to judge you or see what you are doing. When you eat alone, it remains your “dirty little secret.”
5. You use food as a reward. Food becomes part of your everyday reward system. You tell yourself that, when you have finished a project or accomplished some goal that you will have something special to eat as a “reward” for good behavior. The foods you choose as part of your reward system tend not to be healthy fruits and vegetables but instead are junk foods.
6. You associate food with guilt. Food is something to be ashamed of when you are eating unhealthy. After you eat, you feel guilty about what you have done, much the same way as an addict or alcoholic feels after going on a bender.
7.  You have no relationship between having a full stomach and the need to stop eating. Because you ignore body signals when you are eating unhealthy, you eat until you are stuffed and physically uncomfortable. You don’t recognize when your body has been properly fed and keep on feeding it anyway.
8.  You make unhealthy food choices. Unhealthy eaters forget that you need a balance between healthy proteins, complex carbohydrates, and fats. Instead, you eat foods that provide empty calories so you are not only poorly fed but you gain weight eating the wrong kinds of foods. High fat and sugar foods stimulate “feel good” chemicals in the brain, and such food does stimulate pleasure centers in the brain, so it becomes very easy to turn to your favorite donut to feel better after a fight with a friend or co-worker.
9. You see food as a friend. You spend more time thinking about food as a comfort measure and as something to eat when you want company. Rather than turning to friends and family to comfort you when you are stressed, you turn to food, which never seems to let you down.
10. You are overweight or obese. You don’t become obese when you are strictly following bodily signals for hunger and satiety and you unintentionally eat too much. Eating to comfort emotions does cause obesity and the wide variety of complications that go with that kind of weight gain.  

Whole Foods You Should Eat And Why

10 Habits Of Healthy Eaters

There is increasing evidence that what we put into our bodies plays as big a role in the presence or absence of disease than just about anything else. Those who eat healthy simply have a longer life and a better quality of life when compared to those who do not choose to eat healthy.

One of the more common and harmful dysfunctional eating habits is emotional eating, or emotional overeating. This is something that many people have done in their lives on occasion, and for some it is commonplace and can lead to serious health consequences.

Emotional eaters typically lack the coping skills necessary to deal with stress, pain, fear, and loneliness and so they use food as a drug to deal with them. Typically, their diet is far from healthy and depending on how often they use food to cope with life, it can be downright harmful. Many times, emotional eaters do not know what a healthy diet looks because they are stuck in the vicious cycle of binging when life’s problems becoming too overwhelming.  

What makes a healthy eater?

It is often a matter of good habits. Here are ten habits of healthy eaters you can adopt as your own:

1.      Healthy eaters watch portion sizes. In other words, they know that a portion of steak is just three ounces and a half cup of fruit really means you eat half a cup rather than as much as you want. Monitoring portion sizes helps keep bodyweight within normal limits.

2.      Healthy eaters have colourful plates. They recognize the value of colourful fruits and vegetables, especially orange, green, yellow, and blue fruits and vegetables. Each offers unique health opportunities and many colourful foods contain helpful antioxidants which scavenge for unhealthy oxygen free radicals in the body.

3.      Healthy eaters take their time eating meals. There is about a 20-minute lag time between the time you fill your stomach and brain signals that the body has had enough food. If you eat slowly and mindfully, you can avoid the trap of overeating, indigestion, and weight gain.

4.      Healthy eaters recognize the value of small snacks. Our energy level over the course of a given day can be impacted by the highs and lows of our blood sugar. When we incorporate healthy snacks into our diet, we avoid having too many highs and lows in our daily diet and have energy throughout the day.

5.      Healthy eaters don’t eat large evening meals. It is far better to have your bigger meal as the noon meal of the day than it is to eat a large meal at 7 pm just before retiring. This allows the body a chance to metabolize a large meal and avoids the trap of eating too much before sleeping—something that can lead to insomnia.

6.      Healthy eaters eat with others. Food should be part of a social experience with an exchange of conversation happening while eating. It forces you to eat slower and it puts the meal in perspective as part of a social experience.

7.      Healthy eaters focus on unsaturated rather than saturated fats. In other words, they tend to lean toward plant oils when cooking and away from fats and oils that come from animals, including butter and cream. Saturated fats tend to raise cholesterol levels and are not particularly heart healthy. 

8.      Healthy eaters have dessert sparingly. While topping off a good meal with a dessert sounds like the right thing to do, it only adds empty calories to your diet and should instead be a rare treat on special occasions. Regular meals should be meals in and of themselves rather than a part of a whole dinner/dessert package. Similarly, those who follow a healthy diet rarely go to fast food restaurants or consume high calorie nutrient poor junk food, like potato chips, doughnuts, candy, and soda.

9.      Healthy eaters eat more fruits and vegetables than they do meat. Meals should contain more fruits, vegetables and whole grains than they do meat products. This means using meat more sparingly as part of a larger vegetable dish rather than grilling up a big slab of meat as the focus of the meal.

10.  Healthy eaters choose whole grains. Rather than subsist on white bread and processed rice or pasta, the healthy eater chooses the whole grain variety. Whole grains are especially high in fibre, which helps the bowels move more easily. Foods high in soluble fibre like oats can also reduce cholesterol levels and help with healthy weight management.

50 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat No: 50

Tips to help lose weight quickly.

50.    When all else fails, there’s always surgery—If you’ve tried everything and you just can’t get rid of your belly fat, there are two types of surgery you could consider.

•        Tummy tuck—This is also referred to as an abdominoplasty.  It takes out the excessive fat and skin you have stored in your mid section.  It can usually reestablish weakened muscles which gives you an abdominal area that is firmer.

•        Panniculectomy—This can be done by itself or along with an abdominoplasty.  It removes any overhanging skin and tissue known as an “apron” from below the naval. This skin usually occurs when people have had excessive weight loss. 

If you have overhanging skin, it can cause you a lot of problems.  Obviously, it would pull on your back, causing back pain.  It can also cause hygiene problems, and yeast infections.  Sometimes cysts develop in the folds.  If you have this overhanging skin, it shouldn’t be ignored.

 Following a few little tips can help you with weight loss.

You can download my book free with all the tips to lose belly fat.

I also have 5 other gifts which will help with your slimming goals

Workout For A Slim Waist

50 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat No: 48 & 49

Tips to help lose weight quickly.

48.    Fit some type of exercise into your normal work day—This can be difficult for some people.  It all depends on the type of job you have.  You might set aside your lunch hours for walking.  If that’s not possible, plan five minutes out of each day for a power walk.  Take long, brisk strides when you walk down the hall or go up and down stairs.

49.    Stretch the sides of your waist—With one arm over your head, lean as far as you can to the opposite side.  Then switch hands.  This will strengthen the muscles of your waistline. It will tone them, and remember, muscle burns fat, so having good muscle tone is important.

 Following a few little tips can help you with weight loss.

You can download my book free with all the tips to lose belly fat.

I also have 5 other gifts which will help with your slimming goals.

50 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat No:46 & 47

Tips to help lose weight quickly.

46.    Try exercising in small bursts—Research shows that alternating bursts of energy, just small ones, with brief resting periods can not only improve your muscle tone and burn calories, but it can also build endurance.  This is a good way to get started and build up to the more serious exercises.  You might try sprinting.  Just run as fast as you can for around 20 seconds.  Walk until your breathing returns to normal, and do it again.  If you do this for about 10 minutes a day, you’ll be on your way to a good start.

Set your exercise equipment for interval training—In this mode, it increases the difficulty for short periods and then returns to normal.  It gives you the effect of exercising in small bursts by using machines.

47.    Snack first—If you’re going out for a business dinner or to a party of some kind, eat a healthy, high-protein snack before you go.  This will make you less hungry, and will allow you to eat smaller portions of the more fattening foods.

 Following a few little tips can help you with weight loss.

You can download my book free with all the tips to lose belly fat.

I also have 5 other gifts which will help with your slimming goals.

Quick Sweat Cardio Burst - Fast Fat Burning Cardio Workout with Kelli & ...

Working Your Core: How to Do Leg Lifts - Health & Fitness - ModernMom

50 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat No: 44 & 45

50 Tips to help lose weight quickly.

44.    Keep good posture—Although you might not realize it, you use many core muscles simply to hold yourself up straight in good posture.  Keeping good posture while tightening your stomach muscles can strengthen both the back muscles and the abdominal muscles.

45.    Simple leg lifts—To tighten the abdominal muscles, lay flat on your back. Raise your feet about two inches off the ground and hold it to a slow count of ten.  Lower your feet and then do it again. Try to do this at least 10 times a day.  It is a simple basic way to begin to strengthen weakened abdominal muscles.

Following a few little tips can help you with weight loss.

You can download my book free with all the tips to lose belly fat.

I also have 5 other gifts which will help with your slimming goals.

POP Pilates for Beginners - Total Body Workout

50 Tips To Reduce Belly Fat No: 42 & 43

50 Tips to help lose weight quickly.

42.    Weight training or Pilates—Either of these, in conjunction with a good cardio workout, can help you build muscle.  Muscle will burn calories.  You can find free weight training workouts for beginners to advanced, and Pilates classes are available for all levels as well.  Cardio three to five times a week with a good weight training program will help you burn overall body fat, and that includes that dreaded belly fat.

43.    Breath control exercises—Another for of supplemental exercise is breath control exercises that are good for the abdominal region. Yoga is a prime example.  Though it is optional, and not essential for reducing belly fat, it is a simple way to strengthen the abdominal area and remove inches from your waistline. 

Following a few little tips can help you with weight loss.

You can download my book free with all the tips to lose belly fat.

I also have 5 other gifts which will help with your slimming goals.