Dr. Fitness and the Fat Guy

Get ready for this emotional eaters….like me…..when we eat feeling lonely or blue, tend to lose the least amount of weight and have the hardest time keeping it off. Doesn’t that stink! Heather Niemeier, an obesity researcher at The Miriam Hospital and The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, said in a statement. “We found that the more people report eating in response to thoughts and feelings, the less weight they lost,”
The study included 286 overweight men and women who were participating in a behavioral weight loss program.

A second group consisted of more than 3,300 adults who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for at least one year.Niemeier and her team analyzed responses to an eating inventory questionnaire.They focused on people who ate because of external influences, such as people who eat too much at parties, and people who ate because of internal influences, such as feeling lonely or as a reward.

What they found is that the more a person ate for internal reasons, the less weight they lost over time.”Our results suggest that we need to pay more attention to eating triggered by emotions or thoughts as they clearly play a significant role in weight loss,” Niemeier said.

So, what can you do if emotional eating is a problem?
Make a conscious effort to become more aware of how and why you may be using food or what is going on around you while you are eating. Develop new skills for mood regulation. If you need support to do so, find a professional. The focus should be on improving your emotional and physical well-being not just weight loss.

Tags: emotional eating, Fat guy, Forkchops, Heather Niemeier, Jason Bonham, Jimmy Page, John-Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at 2:24 pm and is filed under Blog Posts, Recommendations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.