17 Oct Emotional Eating

It is one thing to treat the disease but another to address the underlying causes of it. All too often, people are focused so much on what is on the surface while ignoring the real cause of the problem. By doing this, there will be no changes that will be made. This is true in any aspect of health, which is one reason that things like holistic medicine are taking hold in today’s medical world. One such scenario where this is a common cause is when it comes to obesity and excessive weight gain.

EMOTIONAL EATING AND EXCESSIVE WEIGHT GAIN

To honestly treat obesity and excessive weight gain, it has recently been discovered that treatments are much more effective when the medical team gets down to the core of the real problem at play here.

To be effective, strategies must be developed to have an improved understanding of any psychological or behavioural problems that may get in the way of their patients adopting a healthier lifestyle. All the treatments in the world are not going to help without this. One of the significant issues typically revolves around emotional eating.

The thing about emotional eating is that there are generally triggers that cause it. Emotional eating, by definition, means that a person will eat more in response to negative feelings. These triggers can include life stressors, negative issues in one’s life, and even distress over one’s weight. Negative emotions, such as depression, anger, and guilt, are also huge issues when it comes to emotional eating. It has also been proven that people will eat emotionally due to irritation and disgust with themselves when they think about how much they weigh. This is an especially tricky problem because their obesity is essentially making them gain more weight.

This emotional eating gets in the way of losing weight. The issue is that obesity can lead to a multitude of other severe and chronic illnesses. Some of these include some forms of cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Someone who is obese is also more likely to suffer from depression, which, as previously mentioned, will cause a person to overeat.

HOW TO TREAT EMOTIONAL EATING AND EXCESSIVE WEIGHT GAIN

There are many different schools of thought that need to work together to treat this problem holistically. When creating a plan to resolve these issues, these following things need to be implemented in a treatment plan to increase success: exercise decreased caloric intake and psychotherapy.

Psychotherapy is such a hugely important aspect of treatment. Psychotherapy is an incredibly useful tool because it offers a variety of different benefits to its patients. One way this is useful is because it can help the patient recall any traumatic event or events that may cause a person to eat emotionally eat. Another benefit is that through psychotherapy, acceptance-based therapy. In this type of treatment, the patient will discuss their internal thoughts and emotions to acknowledge the struggles that they have concerning eating. Through psychotherapy, the patient can do “talk therapy” to look at these issues. Finally, psychotherapy is a way that the therapist can utiliSe mindfulness approaches to teach coping strategies. These coping strategies will help the patient in case one of their triggers comes up that would typically cause emotional eating. There are also benefits to attending group therapy sessions with others who are suffering from the same issues. This type of peer counselling can help people by allowing them to connect with other people who have the same problems as they do. They can offer advice that works for them to help inspire others. Psychotherapy can help to reduce emotional eating.

Psychotherapy can spill over into other aspects of treating obesity and excessive weight gain. People who have completed psychotherapy have been seen to have an increase in the amount of exercise that they do regularly. Exercise can also help maximise the results of psychotherapy by helping to increase the patient’s mood. It has been a proven fact that exercising moderately regularly improves mood and also help with self-regulatory skills and increase the feelings of their ability. Exercise also helps to mitigate emotional eating. This is hands down the essential part of losing weight. If they succeed here, they will be more likely to succeed in weight loss in the long-term.

A final but also incredibly important aspect of treating obesity and excessive weight gain is a reduction in the intake of calories. This is another crucial part of losing weight. By reducing the amount of food and cutting out empty calories, the patient will be more likely to lose weight. Caloric intake must be appropriately balanced with the amount of exercise that is completed.

CONCLUSION

Everyone is different. Obesity and excessive weight gain can affect anyone, but some people are more prone to suffering from this condition. There can be very severe health repercussions that come as a result of being obese or overweight. Obesity can cause a variety of different chronic illnesses that would affect a person for the rest of their lives. This is avoidable and very treatable if the person is willing to work hard enough at it genuinely. They cannot do this alone, however, and a treatment plan that focuses on different aspects of weight loss would be the most beneficial to people who are obese.

Much like with other health problems, you will not only need to treat the condition itself but all of the underlying factors that cause the problem. As a result, a treatment plan should include not just exercise and a reduction of calories but also include psychotherapy. Treatment is the most effective when using all of these together because this will maximiSe the results of losing weight. Each one of these pieces fit together like a puzzle to get to the primary goal. Psychotherapy will help encourage a person to exercise and to increase their mood while exercising helps burn calories and improve mood. Combine this with eating fewer calories, and you will find yourself on the right path to long-term success.