Everywhere you turn there’s food and drink. No wonder there is a problem with overeating. Its not like you can really get away from it either. Just about every celebration, gathering or meeting involves some type of feeding. This can be detrimental to those of you who are faced with conquering your emotional eating issues.

But there is hope, you don’t have to be controlled by your emotions, you can turn it around and eat to live instead of living to eat. Here are the all important strategies you need to be successful on your weight management journey.

Learn
In order to fix anything, you have to learn what’s not working or out of whack. The same goes for emotional eating. Emotional eating occurs when a physiological feeling such as anger, joy, sadness, boredom, jealousy, disgust, frustration or even happiness causes you to reach for food. This isn’t real hunger. Real hunger is your stomach growling or having a slight headache or even decreased energy due to fatigue. Real hunger is a signal to your brain that your body is running out of fuel.

Typically, you should be eating every 3-4 hours. So if you start to feel like you need to eat and its only been an hour or so since your last meal, its probably NOT a real hunger signal, but instead an emotional signal to eat. Learn the difference.

Identify
Now that you know your emotions could be fooling your brain into thinking you are hungry, it’s time to identify real hunger verses emotional hunger.
Physical hunger presents itself in the following ways:
• Growling or grumbling stomach
• Empty feeling in your stomach
• Slight headache
• Light dizziness
• Slight fatigue

Tune your mind to “listen” for these hunger signals, then be ready to refuel your body with the proper food.
Manage

OK, so now you also know what causes emotional eating and you’ve learned how to recognize real hunger signals. The next step is managing the process.
In order for this process to really work, you must be prepared. Go through your cabinets and fridge and get rid of all the foods that can throw you off track when “emotional hunger” rears its ugly head. Stock you kitchen with healthy choices:
• Whole grains
• Veggies
• Fruits
• Low fat snacks
• Non-processed foods
• Ingredients to make your own healthy snacks

Plan when you will eat and what you will eat. Yes, it takes time and energy and effort, but the results will pay off in the end.

Succeed
Living a healthy lifestyle is really all about making a choice. You are in control of the daily choices that you make concerning what you eat, when and how much.

Yes, emotions do play a huge role in your life and there will certainly be no shortage of chances to overeat or eat foods that are not on your “healthy choices” list, but that’s life. The main thing to remember is this is YOUR life and when you make the choice to control what you eat; you are in control, not your emotions.

Make up your mind right now to take the next step to your begin your weight loss success. If you don’t make up your mind to change right now, you will continue to gain weight.

Well, there’s nothing like a Healthy Competition to get the weight off!

I challenge you to become a Big “Loser!” Take charge of your health – Register for the 31 Days of Losing Weight Loss Challenge.