Minimise the Red Zone
If you can identify emotional eating patterns and triggers you’re well equipped to make constructive changes. Try to anticipate vulnerable red zones that connect moods and foods. Red zones are as inevitable as feelings themselves, but there are things you can do to make them more of a dark orange.
Strategies for navigating the red zone
Keep your mood and blood sugar stable by keeping rested, fit, hydrated and eating regularly throughout the day. Try to be organized and manage your time appropriately to avoid creating crises that flood your body with stress hormones unnecessarily. Don’t keep supplies of comfort foods in your home if they’re too hard for you to resist and try not to shop for groceries when you’re in a potential red zone. Consider ways to break entrenched patterns, for example curb evening cravings by going for a walk or having a shower after dinner. Make a habit of filling the car with petrol earlier in the day if a late afternoon stop tends to have you loading up on chocolate.
Be clear with yourself on what constitutes a treat food and what constitutes emotional eating. Don’t kid yourself that something from the vending machine is a treat. That’s not fun. A treat is going out for cake and coffee with a friend, not sneakily scoffing junk food in front of the pantry. It’s wine and cheese with a loved one, not wine and chips in front of the TV.
Schedule and enjoy your indulgences
Most people can lose weight very successfully while still enjoying windows of treat food. It can be helpful to use your social schedule to choose your treat times. It can also help to consider your female cycle. Most women have two points each month where they crave unhealthy foods with unusual intensity. Obviously it’s not ideal to eat unhealthy food just because it’s a hormonal time. But if you think you're likely to succumb to treats anyway you might as well schedule them, anticipate them and enjoy them. It’s not really emotional eating in the true sense if it’s finite and premeditated. That’s calculated chaos!
However many safeguards you put in place it’s inevitable that unscheduled cravings will strike. Fortunately there are lots of tools and tricks you can use to keep control of your choices, even when you’re in the middle of a red zone.
Strategies for navigating the red zone
Keep your mood and blood sugar stable by keeping rested, fit, hydrated and eating regularly throughout the day. Try to be organized and manage your time appropriately to avoid creating crises that flood your body with stress hormones unnecessarily. Don’t keep supplies of comfort foods in your home if they’re too hard for you to resist and try not to shop for groceries when you’re in a potential red zone. Consider ways to break entrenched patterns, for example curb evening cravings by going for a walk or having a shower after dinner. Make a habit of filling the car with petrol earlier in the day if a late afternoon stop tends to have you loading up on chocolate.
Be clear with yourself on what constitutes a treat food and what constitutes emotional eating. Don’t kid yourself that something from the vending machine is a treat. That’s not fun. A treat is going out for cake and coffee with a friend, not sneakily scoffing junk food in front of the pantry. It’s wine and cheese with a loved one, not wine and chips in front of the TV.
Schedule and enjoy your indulgences
Most people can lose weight very successfully while still enjoying windows of treat food. It can be helpful to use your social schedule to choose your treat times. It can also help to consider your female cycle. Most women have two points each month where they crave unhealthy foods with unusual intensity. Obviously it’s not ideal to eat unhealthy food just because it’s a hormonal time. But if you think you're likely to succumb to treats anyway you might as well schedule them, anticipate them and enjoy them. It’s not really emotional eating in the true sense if it’s finite and premeditated. That’s calculated chaos!
However many safeguards you put in place it’s inevitable that unscheduled cravings will strike. Fortunately there are lots of tools and tricks you can use to keep control of your choices, even when you’re in the middle of a red zone.