Day 33 - Beck Diet Solution, Eliminate Emotional Eating

People without weight problems don’t turn to food when they get upset.  BDS teaches us to do the same.  There is nothing wrong with having negative emotions – they are just a sign that there’s a problem.  But we need to handle them without relying on food – otherwise we will just not be able to sustain weight loss over the long term.  Just like hunger, negative emotions are not emergencies.  We can learn to withstand and diffuse them without food ever coming into the picture.

Tomorrow we will learn techniques about how to solve the problem that led to the negative feelings.  But for now here are some ways to find relief from the negative emotions without bringing food into the equation:

·       Call the feeling what it is: a negative emotion and not hunger.  Labeling it as such will help.

·       Remind yourself: NO CHOICE.

·       Think about what will happen if you eat and how you’ll feel then, think about all the times you promised yourself you wouldn’t give in to food and then did, how that felt…is it really worth it to go down that road and add those problems to the one(s) you already have?

·       Read your Advantages Response Card and remind yourself of all the reasons you wanted to lose weight in the first place.

·       Find an activity on your Distraction Activities Chart.  How many have you tried by now and did you rate how effective each one was for you?

·       Drink a low or no-calorie beverage.

·       Practice relaxation techniques like yoga, meditation or taking a long bath.

At first these techniques might be most effective with minor to moderate negative emotions, but the more you practice them the better they will work against more severe emotions.  Just remember that you deserve to be comforted, but food is not the way to go about it.