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According to a recent poll in Self Magazine emotional eating affects the majority of women. Traditionally, we women are the nourishers of the family, we feed them and soothe them, but we sometimes get out of touch with our own emotional needs and that’s when we start looking to our food to be our friend as well as our fuel.

This article explores four ways to become more aware of your emotions and eating habits so that you can discover how to nourish yourself without reaching for the biscuit tin.

1. Know Your Triggers

The more aware you are of the triggers that prompt you to eat when you’re stressed, bored, or upset, the more control you will have over your eating habits. You can build awareness by keeping a brief food journal of what you eat, where you eat, and why you eat. Discovering why is not always so easy at first but as you get into the habit of increasing your awareness, you will soon discover some interesting clues.

Avoid Adverts: Many of us watch TV to “get away from it all” for a while. Unfortunately in that inert, and sometimes unhappy state, we are a prime target for adverts for comfort junk foods. Skipping the adverts is one way to deal with this, but better still is skipping TV. TV time could be replaced by a walk, some gentle breathing exercises, a shower, a chat with a friend, or anything else that’s upbeat and feels nice and supportive to you.

Tackle Cravings: Once we start to become aware of our triggers then we can work with changing them. If there’s a particular food that you frequently crave you can download my free quick start guide to Emotional Freedom Techniques here. Any time you feel a craving for that food you can work through the EFT sequence and reduce your desire to eat it. This is something I may write more about later, but in the meantime you can read this excellent article on EFT’s success in controlling emotional eating.

(Continue reading this post via Living by Design)