Emotional Eating Can Be A Big Deal

Are you an emotional eater? Most people will deny it if they are.

Here is a simple test for you. If you just had a rough day and feel kind of sad or depressed, are you likely to (a. go and talk to a friend or loved one and discuss your feelings, (b. Indulge in extracurricular activities or hobbies, or (c. eat until you feel better.

If your answer is c, well then you may be an emotional eater. Don't worry everyone has done it before.

It only becomes bad when it becomes habit, and we indulge in emotional eating. This can lead to some scary diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol, or other diseases.

The problem now a day is that people are not concerned with their health, and they are indulging in practices that neither helps them emotionally or physically. When you are empting the contents of a tub of ice cream or eating an entire box of cookies, you are actually not dealing with anything, but rather avoiding something and distracting yourself from your avoidance with tasty food.

Emotional eating can become addictive, especially in children. Parents that feed their little kid candy bars so that they will stop crying, or feel better are actually teaching very bad emotional eating habits.

A better and much more constructive way to get your kid from being depressive is to play games with him or her. This works until they start hitting teenage years, then you have to get creative. If you have been playing games with your kid for thirteen or more years, they should be able to know how to play on their own.

Emotional eating is not always eating when you are sad either. You may have trained yourself to expect a snack whenever you have done something good.

Rewarding yourself is good, don't get me wrong, but don't do it with food. You are not an animal, you are a person, find something constructive to reward yourself with like a cd or a dvd or something fun.

Controversially you can also train your children to become emotional eaters by rewarding them with food. Taking your child out to eat is much different than giving them a bag of gummy worms.

One of them is an experience that you are sharing, and the other is a fatty bag of gelatin. It gets really bad when the parents reward bad and good behavior with food.

That is asking for an obese kid right there. Not to worry though, understanding why you eat can help you to stop eating so much, or so poorly.

Destry Masterson is a health and fitness expert who has written many articles about exercise and recommends http://www.treadmillcomparison.com for treadmill comparison. Contact Info: Destry Masterson - MyOnlineArticleWriting@gmail.com - Twitter: @DestryMasterson