Susannah Taylor Is food your comfort blanket - YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Sign in Welcome!Log into your account Forgot your password? Password recovery Recover your password Search Sign in Welcome! Log into your account Forgot your password? Get help Password recovery Recover your password A password will be e-mailed to you. YOU Magazine Fashion Beauty Celebrity Health Life Relationships Horoscopes Food Interiors Travel Home Life Susannah Taylor Is food your comfort blanket By You Magazine - January 17, 2021 A few years ago I visited the author and brilliant nutritional therapist Amelia Freer for a consultation. I remember her asking me whether my emotions played a role in my eating habits. Did I reward myself with food if I was happy? Or did I use food as a comfort blanket if I felt sad or overwhelmed? ‘I don’t think I do either,’ I replied, to which she said, ‘You’re very lucky, that’s rare.’ Peter Dazeley/Getty Images ‘Many of our emotional eating habits may stem back to our childhood,’ Amelia told me more recently. ‘And the messages around food that we were taught then, such as finishing everything on our plates or being “rewarded” with sweets and chocolate, can create subconscious patterns of emotion around food.’ Emotional eating is complex because everyone has a different ‘trigger’ that causes them to reach for the fridge door. Amelia explains that these could be major life events, but they can also be smaller daily stresses that invoke negative feelings such as fear and loneliness. These can leave us feeling that we have to fill a ‘void’. On the other hand, she says, ‘Some of us equate happiness and success with food treats, such as eating a lavish meal to celebrate a promotion, which may lead to confusing feelings of guilt afterwards.’ Of course, not all emotion around food is detrimental – food is, after all, an important part of social and emotional health – but the key, Amelia says, is working out which parts serve us and which don’t. Having witnessed many of my friends struggling with emotional eating over the years, which has led them to yo-yo dieting (and often yo-yoing in weight), it is clear to me that diets don’t fix anything unless the underlying feelings about food have been worked out first. Our attitude towards it is the most important part of healthy eating – before we even think about putting anything in our mouths. Amelia, who works with a psychologist in her clinic, agrees: ‘It is common for people to lose weight on a “diet” only to find they are soon back at square one and emotionally eating again.’ So what can we do to help ourselves? If you feel you are an emotional eater, then Amelia recommends seeking help from a qualified health professional. She also has some advice for when your mood is making you reach for the Ben & Jerry’s… Ask yourself are you truly hungry It’s all too easy to grab a biscuit if you feel slightly uncomfortable in yourself, so Amelia suggests working out first if you are actually hungry using a ‘hunger scale’. The idea is that you ‘score yourself on a scale from one (not hungry at all) to ten (ravenous), and only eat when you’re a six/seven or above’. Are you stomach hungry or head hungry Amelia suggests asking yourself if you fancy the taste of something or are seeking a distraction or reward. ‘Eating for distraction can be particularly pronounced when we are feeling negative emotions such as stress or boredom,’ she says. Create a food-free treat jar Instead of eating, take time to acknowledge how you are feeling, then take positive action to improve your mood. Amelia suggests an alternative to the cookie jar in the form of ‘non-food’ treats to nourish your soul in place of eating, such as listening to music, reading a magazine, being creative or hugging your dog. Glow from the gut… Carla Oates, an Australian former beauty editor, started The Beauty Chef – a range of probiotic, bio-fermented and wholefood powders and elixirs – after realising that gut health was the key to fixing her and her family’s eczema. She believes that skin and hair health can be vastly improved by nurturing our gut microbiome. And after seeing her glowing complexion and lustrous hair, I’m in. Glow Inner Beauty Essential, £40, cultbeauty.co.uk. … and nurture the real you 2020 taught us that we need to get back to what makes us tick, and new book High Grade Living by meditation teacher Jacqui Lewis and husband Arran Russell does just that. It takes us through a beautifully illustrated guide to meditation, refining your home, increasing creativity and deepening relationships, all interspersed with peace-inducing nature and interior photography. £24.95*, Thames & Hudson. RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR Everything we know about The Crown season 5 Aldi s exercise equipment is on sale with up to 50% off The best Halloween events for 2022 across the UK Popular in Life The You magazine team reveal their New Year s resolutions December 31, 2021 Susannah Taylor The TLC tools your body will love January 23, 2022 How to stop living in fear February 6, 2022 Susannah Taylor My pick of the fittest leggings February 27, 2022 Women’ s Prize for Fiction 2022 winner announced June 17, 2022 These BBC dramas are returning for a second series June 30, 2022 Susannah Taylor gives the lowdown on nature s little helper – CBD April 17, 2022 The baby names that are banned across the world April 27, 2022 The Queen has released her own emojis May 26, 2022 Sally Brompton horoscopes 27th June-3rd July 2022 June 26, 2022 Popular CategoriesFood2704Life2496Fashion2240Beauty1738Celebrity1261Interiors684 Sign up for YOUMail Thanks for subscribing Please check your email to confirm (If you don't see the email, check the spam box) Fashion Beauty Celebrity Life Food Privacy & Cookies T&C Copyright 2022 - YOU Magazine. All Rights Reserved