How to overcome comfort eating

[Embarrassedcomforteater]

I have NC'ed due to embarrassment. I am heavier than I would like and really need to do something about it. If you took out all the junk I would have quite a healthy diet. Around 8 portions of fruit/veg/lean meat/eggs etc. the only thing I don't eat is fish/shellfish due to one DC's allergies. But, and it's a big but, I eat huge amounts of chocolate, crisps, biscuits, cake etc. I know this is comfort eating, I am on antidepressants and having counselling. How do I stop?

Stop buying them and bin whatever you have in the house. You know how much each cost, so put that money in a jar for a fun day with the kids.
It might be comfort eating or just addiction. All these foods have been engineered to make you crave them. Go cold turkey for a week and you will see.

@KingIrving is right. Cut out all carbs for a week, go moderate on protein and load up on fats.

Your sugar cravings will disappear when you do this.

Happy to explain why if interested.

Sorry, I should have said not having it in the house isn't an option. I have DC who are underweight whose diets are medically supervised. It is most definitely comfort eating. The days where I am emotionally stronger I don't eat any, but the times I am low and days are difficult I reach for them.

I really struggle with comfort eating so I feel your pain.

Can you at least cutdown what you have in the house. So your children are underweight but that doesn't mean they need to eat lots of cakes and chocolate. What about just keeping multipacks of cake bars/chocolate with one for each day for them and nothing else.

Think of healthy food that could be a treat instead. For example a bowl of strawberries/raspberries with yoghurt/single cream, or frozen yoghurt/low calorie ice cream.

Also think of things that are treats that aren't food, so an hour of your favourite programme, a long hot bath, and try rewarding yourself in other ways?

On good days I do eat fruit instead (either on it's own or with yogurt/cream), on bad days it would be as well as.

You are right they don't need lots of chocolate. Cake is homemade - either by myself, MIL or an older DC. The DC with special diets have either a slice of that, a muffin, slice of fruit pie etc. once or twice a day. Crisps are encouraged.

It is a problem bigger than one particular item because if that's not there it is pastries or cheese and crackers or croissants. Basically when I am low I reach for high calorie snack food. Frozen yogurt is a good idea.

I do need to look at how I reward myself. I would love a long bath, but need a few extra few a day.

I know I sound negative and like I am making excuses but I am genuinely not, life is busy and the food has to be in the house.

Ok, this might be unhelpful advice, but as a child I was very skinny, and was encouraged to eat pudding once or twice a day because I needed the extra calories. However as an adult this set me up for bad eating habits because I was so used to the mindsight I can eat whatever I want.

Is there a way of getting everyone the calories they need without having lots of sweet stuff in the house that you'll be tempted by? It's going to be so much harder doing this when this type of food is always at arms reach.

If that's impossible could you try writing everything down you eat or recording in in an app like my fitness pal. Recording binges might make you less likely to binge in future? Or if you've written down everything you've eaten and it looks like enough food for the day try drawing a line under it. You also need to distract yourself as much as possible.

Perhaps it might help to evaluate how the 'comfort' food makes you feel after you've eaten it - are you feeling worse than you did before you ate it? If so, it's not actually doing a good job of comforting you, and actually makes you feel grotty. If you can start recognising this each time you eat this sort of food, you might be able to stop thinking of it as a 'treat'..?

Hi. There's another thread in this weight loss board. Called weight loss by being kind to ourselves.
Come and join us there. We're working on non food rewards etc.

Flightly, that is completely true. It doesn't make me feel any better (if only my issues were so easy to deal with), I get angry at myself for eating it.

Writing everything down is a good idea, it could be the shock I need, I do it for DC so that won't be a problem.

No, miss, I don't think there is, or at least not one I can think of. It's not just sweet foods it's also high calorie savoury snacks I turn to too. Barring allergies the DC on special diets will always be 'able to eat want they want' - though it's not something to envy. The puddings are after lunch and dinner, though they sometimes leave some/all. They eat them in addition to meals and other snacks.

Bazzinga I will have a read, thank you.

My previous post should say 'a few extra hours a day'

This book/plan is specifically for weight gain on antidepressants and for emotional eating (it explains why we crave carbs while on antidepressants) and has a plan that works very very well.

It involves eating a set amount of carbs at set times to boost serotonin levels so the cravings to comfort eat don't happen - so it's a high carb low fat diet. Which isn't how current thinking in weight loss goes but this is designed (the authors have a neuroscience background) specifically to reverse antidepressant weight gain and break the comfort eating cycle for good.

Have a read of the reviews on Amazon, I found it a revelation (and got in on kindle and also found it really worked welfare stabilising mood and weight loss).

www.google.ie/search?q=the+serotonin+power+diet&rlz=1C9BKJA_enIE669IE669&oq=the+serot&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.4356j0j7&hl=en-GB&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8