Don’t Let Emotional Eating Sabotage Your Weight Loss Surgery Success

If you’ve had bariatric surgery, congratulations! You’ve made a major commitment to improving your health. But even after surgery, it’s important to be mindful of emotional eating habits that could sabotage your success. In this article, we will discuss how to identify and stop emotional eating.

Signs of Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is a common threat to weight loss success after bariatric surgery. It can be difficult to identify, especially if you’ve struggled with emotional eating for a long time. However, there are some telltale signs that emotional eating might be at play in your life:

~You crave certain foods because they make you feel good or relieve stress

~When you do eat emotionally, you often eat too much and then feel guilty afterward

~Eating triggers negative emotions, such as stress and anxiety, which leads to further overeating or bingeing

How to Stop Emotional Eating

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to address this behavior and stop emotional eating before it derails your weight loss journey. Here are some tips to help you get started:

~Identify the root cause of your emotional eating. It may help to keep a journal or food diary to track when and why you feel compelled to eat. Once you have identified a trigger, it becomes easier to address the issue and prevent emotional eating from taking hold in the future.

~Find other ways to manage stress and anxiety. There are many healthy ways to cope with negative feelings besides turning to food. Consider counseling, exercise, meditation, or another activity that helps you relax and soothe your mind. Learning new coping skills can be challenging at first, but as with all habits, it gets easier over time.

~Bariatric surgery is a life-changing event, and it is important to have a strong support system both before and after the procedure. During the months leading up to surgery, patients will need to make significant changes to their diet and lifestyle in order to qualify for the procedure. This can be difficult to do on one's own, and having family and friends who are supportive and understanding can make a big difference. This support system can help you make healthy choices and stick to your goals both before and after surgery. By having a strong support system before, during, and after surgery, patients are more likely to be successful in their weight loss journey.

~Connect with your food. Being mindful when it comes to eating rituals can help transform your perspective when it comes to food. One of the best ways to connect with your food is to turn off the television, leave your phone in another room, and sit down at the table. This simple ritual gives you a chance to slow down and really savor your meal. When you're not distracted by the television or phone screen, you can pay attention to the colors, textures, and aromas of your food. Eating mindfully in this way can help you appreciate the effort that went into preparing your meal and to savor the flavors. It can also help you to eat more slowly, which can aid digestion and help you feel more satisfied.

We hope these tips were helpful in beginning to understand how you can end emotional eating. It is a difficult process that takes time, but it is possible to retrain your brain to respond differently to triggers and work towards a healthier relationship with food. Remember to be patient with yourself, give yourself grace, and keep trying even when you stumble--change isn't easy, but it's worth it. With some practice and patience, you can change your relationship with food for the better and achieve all of the benefits that bariatric surgery has to offer.

We hope this article has been helpful in raising awareness about emotional eating and how to address it after bariatric surgery. For more articles related to bariatric surgery, visit www.DrWadiwala.com.