Are you a binge eater or an emotional eater – or maybe both? Sometimes we don’t even recognize that we are doing that, right?
Let me tell you a few things about me. Let me start with what happened. I could go into my whole story but it would probably take 15 pages so I am going to make it short and sweet!
It took me years to realize all of this was a big problem for me. Don’t get me wrong. I knew I was vaguely aware that I was a binge eater. I mean it should have been pretty obvious. Open a bag of candy or a bar of English chocolate, and I could not stop at a few pieces. No! I had to eat the whole thing. And guess what? Sometimes even that was not enough. I am ashamed to say, I would often go to another bar or another bag. It was bad! If you are this type of binge eater like me, you are fully aware of how hard it is to stop once you have gone down that slippery slope. Then for me, would come the guilt. The promise I would not do this again. I was disappointed that I seemed to have no self-control with my eating and my cravings. The weight would pile on (all around my middle), and I would absolutely hate to look in the mirror.
This kind of scenario can bring you to the point where it is paralyzing you, and you just don’t know why you are where you are. It was certainly like me for me. I didn’t know why I was in such a mess, but I got to a point where I knew I had to do something about it. I knew something had to change for me. My health was suffering, my weight was suffering, and I was a hot mess.
However, what was not so obvious to me was the emotional aspect of eating like this. However, there are good comforting emotions and then the stress eating. Whatever type of emotion, it still leads to emotional eating. As I have walked my own health journey, several things have become more clear. Let me share a quick story of a recent example.
My mum passed a couple of years ago, but it has been something I have really had trouble dealing with and coming to terms with. After she passed, I found myself eating a lot of English candy. That candy was some of my mum’s favorite sweets (as we call them in England); actually some we would eat together when I went home to visit her. Maybe not her most favorite as they are not available over here in Florida (which is a very good thing for me!). I didn’t even realize it at the time until a had one of those “ah-ha” moments, but eating those sweets made me feel connected to her again, and I drew comfort from that. It actually took me a while to realize I was doing that as a form of relieving my grief and keeping that connection.
I see the whole sugar thing as not just being a health issue but about being an emotional issue as well and I just want women to be free from that. I don’t want us to have to live that way, and I don’t want to have people go on not being educated in what this means to us. It can be so detrimental to our health.
When it comes to educating people, once we have that awareness and knowledge, then we have to make decisions and changes, right? And so the work begins! Armed with that knowledge, you have to face it and work on solutions!
In this blog, I am giving you some solutions to this issue. This is only a small piece of the whole picture, but one which I hope will really help you get a handle on whatever it is that has you in its grips. So read!. This week, I am also giving you a sweet healthy treat that will not keep you in the grips of sugar cravings!
How Meal Planning Can Stop Emotional and Binge Eating
So let’s talk more about emotional and binge eating because it is often a train wreck waiting to happen. Maybe for a few days that things have not been going your way. You come home drained and you have no time to look at what you have been eating. You go for the easy option, the lift-your-mood option, the convenient catastrophe. You may have started the week out with your willpower at a 100, but somewhere mid-week, your energy tanked and your cravings skyrocketed.
How do you prevent a crisis like that? You prevent it the way you prevent all crises: a crisis management program or, in this case, meal planning. I truly believe it keeps you on track toward your objectives and gives you easy plans to fall back on. When energy and willpower are running low, there is already a plan in place that you put in place when your energy and willpower were high. A meal plan provides the proverbial breadcrumbs for you to follow the way to the healthy, balanced lifestyle you had set out for when life was sunshine and rainbows.
This is one of the best ways I have found to keep my lifestyle on track and take the stress out of all that is involved with healthy eating, meal preparation, etc.
So let’s talk a little about the benefits of meal planning and prepping ahead. Then I’d love you to try it and see how it works for you. It can really make your life easier and keep you on track for your health goals. Let’s look at the advantages of at least giving meal planning a try.
Portion Planning
Meal planning allows you to give all the important things the appropriate place on your menu. When you plan a menu beforehand, you get to choose what goes in there. Doing this helps you to stick to your goals and healthy lifestyle. It helps you treat your body right and having recommended portions of fruits and vegetables. Even on days when you feel like putting no effort into cooking or like eating whatever your first craving is, the meals you have already planned and prepared remind you that there is an alternate meal that will not only gratify you at the moment but will keep you on the right path toward a healthier you.
Energy
Like many of the resources that play an integral role in our survival, our willpower is non-renewable. We start out our days and weeks with a certain amount of willpower that gets used up rapidly in small decision-making tasks, everything from what we should wear to what we should say. When it’s time to eat, if we do not have a good store of willpower, we fall back on fast foods and unhealthy meals.
Meal planning prevents you from crashing midway because you have plan A, B, and C already in place. When you can’t figure what to make for dinner that is easy and healthy, the meal prep and planning you have done takes off one thing of your daily to-do list and frees up time for you to treat yourself no matter how hard the day has been going.
The Tension
Lack of planning and prepping often leads to more stress, but too much structure can make it too predictable and boring. With a meal plan, you get the best of both worlds. You can avoid the dreaded question, “What do I make for dinner?”, but you can also allow yourself some freedom to experiment. For example, you had planned to make pizza tonight, so you have all the basic ingredients, but you see you also have canned artichokes and some roasted chicken left—let’s throw it on! Because you planned the big stuff ahead of time, you have a little extra energy to spice up a trusted staple with some little stuff. Sometimes it’s that little stuff that makes all the difference!
Meal planning and prep do not have to be overwhelming, so get that out of your head right now. As you do more and more of it, you will find what once took two hours, can now be done in an hour. I have become the “queen of meal prep” and love to have things made ahead. It keeps me on a healthy pathway — and I often plan some special type of dessert that is healthy and delicious as it eases those sugar cravings and I do not feel deprive or dissatisfied.
What about you, will you plan to do a little pre-planning this week and get back on your healthy lifestyle?
Do you need a little more help with how to meal prep or what foods are the best for planning ahead? I would love to talk to you. Schedule a free call with me and let’s find out what your biggest stumbling block is on your journey to a healthier, happier life. Schedule >>HERE<<.