Do you eat because you are anxious, unhappy, stressed or lonely?

You might want to consider blogging. A new, soon to be released study concludes that people who blog feel less isolated and more satisfied with their friendships. The study tracked Myspace users who also blogged and found that after two months of social networking and blogging, participants reported feeling less anxious, depressed and stressed and bloggers in particular felt better about their current social support and friendships than nonbloggers.

The authors concluded that blogging can be a powerful promoter of creative, intuitive and critical and analytical thinking.

Contrary to stereotypes of bloggers as geeks isolated in their private internet world, blogging has the potential to create community, connection and support. For many who are struggling or are shy or not feeling so great about themselves at that particular moment, reaching out online or expressing one's self in a blog post can feel both more accessible and perhaps even emotionally safer. Apparently, it might also leave you feeling better.

What do you think?

Melissa

How to Identify Emotional Eating: Ten Signs

I'm often asked about how to identify whether or not emotional eating may be an issue. Emotional eating is not always easily identified. Here are some patterns that are likely to indicate that some kind of emotional eating is going on:

1. The hunger comes on suddenly and the need to eat feels urgent--physiological hunger comes on slowly and it's okay to delay eating.
2. You keep eating even if you aren't hungry anymore or the hunger doesn't go away even though you are full.
3. You eat to the point of physical discomfort.
4. You don't know whether you were hungry or not when you ate.
5. After you eat you realize you aren't really aware of how much you ate or how it tasted.
6. You have feelings of shame, guilt or embarrassment after eating.
7. You eat because you are bored, tired, lonely, excited.
8. Hunger accompanies an unpleasant emotion--anger, hurt, fear, anxiety. Emotional eating begins in your mind--thinking about food--not in your stomach.
9. You crave a specific food and won't feel content until you have that. If you are eating for physical hunger, any food will fill you up.
10. You keep eating (or grazing, or nibbling) because you just can't figure out what you are hungry for. Nothing seems to hit the spot (physical hunger goes away no matter what food you choose to fill up on).

Stressed Monkeys Overeat

So what's the significance of this story? Well, I hope it helps some who tend to get so angry with themselves when they succumb to eating under stress. No, I don't believe this study means that we can't take charge of overeating, but I think it does show that emotional eating is complex and that our appetites are driven by a number of different issues and realities. The desire to eat to cope with emotions and stress is something that should be approached with respect. Ignoring the cravings or the urges doesn't necessarily get us where we want to go.

I think the story supports the importance of having tools to cope with stress, to bolster our self-care and to help us feel empowered--tools that we can strive to use instead of overeating or stress eating. What do you think?

Take good care,

Melissa

More quick tips

Emotional eating, nervous eating, stress eating, bored eating--the eating that happens when you aren't physically hungry--tends to happen when you don't know what else to do about how you are feeling, or you don't feel like you can take the time to do it. If my last post about enhancing the quality of your life in quick ways interested you, you should check out Lisa Newton's post, 50 Ideas for a Healthy Lifestyle That Take Ten Minutes or Less. Lisa is the founder of Iowa Avenue, a healthy living social community where I am privileged to be able to share my blog posts. Lisa's post above appeared at another site you might want to check out, Dumb Little Man. It's a blog about making life simpler with lots of tips for how to stay satisfied when you live a really busy life. Pretty cool!

Take good care,
Melissa