Friday, May 28, 2010

Strategy #8 Simple Weight Loss Success Habit that Also Curbs Emotional Eating

As I mentioned yesterday, this emotional eating strategy is actually a habit I have developed as part of my healthy eating and weight loss success plan. What I realized quite recently was that this same simple habit also was curbing my emotional or stress related eating!

So what is this mystery habit?

Strategy #8: Read Food Labels

You think I'm kidding, right? Confess, you thought is was going to be something deeper or something...but that's it. Frankly, I was as surprised as you are.

You see, reading labels has become a big habit for me. Now I know that ice cream has a gazillion calories and is loaded with fat and all sorts of ingredients that aren't good for me...and I still give myself permission to eat it...so it isn't that I never eat anything that isn't good for me.

What reading labels does is help me to be honest with myself about my choices...and to realize when I thought a food that was healthy for me actually was loaded with sugar or fake ingredients that I choose not to put into my body.

What I found recently was by stopping to read the label on a food I was reaching for I stopped dead in my tracks. I looked at the label and said I really didn't want to put that in my body...I had been reaching for the food out of the cupboard (I was at my mom's, so I had less control over the contents in the cupboard) and when I saw the list of artificial ingredients it was enough to break my emotional reaction.

So by reading the label I interrupted the pattern (strategy #5) and I gave myself the opportunity to make a conscious choice (strategy #3) in this case I chose not to eat, and I also got to ask myself why I was reaching for the food in the first place (strategy #1.)

I thought is was pretty cool how the simple act of reading the label got 3 different strategies involved and helped nip that emotional eating jag in the bud!

Tomorrow's post will cover a strategy that will help lots and lots of people lose weight...just with this one single strategy!

1 comment:

Rick said...

Great combination strategy with distracting the mind and checking the label. The delay gives you time to consider your choices and the label tells you if it is going to be good fuel for the body.

Lifestyle choices that work well towards keeping the weight off.