I am an emotional eater? Help?

emotinal eating is very simular to smoking, self harming or what ever vice you may do. you are trying to supress or make better negative feelings you have with food. worst still your subconscious mind learns this and it is hard to break the cycle. chances are you over eat and feel bad about it so what happens then...you eat more to get rid of those negative feelings..grr anoying cycle..been there lol. first step is admiting it or realising it which you have done. well done!!! the next step i suggest is to change your habit of your subconscious mind. to do this..
1) if you think you want to eat because of an emotinal feeling try to feel what it is and deal with it. (hard i know)
2) when you eat, eat slowly and consciously. put the fork down after every mouthfull and chew slowllllyyyyy. this interupts your normal eating patten and you think about every mouthfull instead of every cream cake or chocolate bar.
3a) when you think you are full.. stop... it takes 20mins for your full signal to reach your brain from your stomach.
3b) dont feel bad or ashamed about leaving food to waist.. it is not waist.. it is waist if it goes into you and turns into fat... were made to believe that waisting food is wrong because of sayings like 'finish your food theres starving children in the world'. sorry to say it but if you only eat half your dinner or all of it, it aint going to effect africa one bit.
4) drink lots of water and try and exercise. exercise releases endorfins which are the brains happy chemicals. i would even suggest exercise for this alone rather than actually getting fit.

Hope this helps. really long i know. but hey you dont have to read a word. :)
finally if none of that helps you may need to address some negative feelings or emotions about your self that cause you to do this.
remeber your subconscious will try to prove itself right! weather you think you can or you cant your be right.
All the best
storm

No dietary change or alteration of your eating habits will effect a long term solution of this disorder. In order to get a permanent change - not a temporary fix, but a life-changing overhaul to the way that you consume food - you have to fix the cause. And the cause is psychological, and can be fixed.

First, decide for yourself if you really want to change. Can you honestly imagine not resorting to food when you feel upset? If you can't, then there is too much of a conscious desire and no matter what you do, it's going to be impossible to resolve the problem.

On the other hand, if you really resent having the disorder (and I mean hate it, even when you're doing it), there is a way to change it, permanently. What you have is called an "oral fixation". This is almost exclusively caused by really sh1tty parenting. Sorry if that offends you, but most parents really don't have a clue as to how to raise their kids. Most just jam some type of sweet food (or god forbid, a pacifier) into their kids' mouths as a quick fix to "appease" them (i.e., get them to shut up as quickly as possible.) This creates a psychic link between "mouth" and "comfort". Your real emotions were ignored, going un-nurtured, and the mind's recollection of infant-level breast-sucking was triggered, thus resulting in the feel-good sensation of mother/breast/love. This has a real psychological effect, and can even be seen in cat scans, brain imaging, etc.

Solution? Every time you feel the urge to eat, feel the emotion behind it. If it's rage, yell - - scream - - thrash - - into a pillow if necessary. If it's fear, then tremble - - shake - - cry - - again, in private if you have to. Most of the time, however, it's sexual - and I'm pretty sure you know how to solve that.

Anyway, not to write a book...but you asked.

I'm an emotional eater too. And to be honest, even though I've hired a personal trainer and lost 28 pounds, it hasn't "cured" me of my self-destructive habits.

The only thing that works for me is to stock the house with healthy food, and no comfort food. No cookies, no chocolate, no mac n' cheese, none of it. If I desperately get the urge to eat, I HAVE to eat something healthy, like fruit and low fat cheese. Or I just drink a lot of water until I feel too full to eat. No magic cure for me, I'm afraid.

Hi cma06
You need to control you eating or you will develop a weight problem. The easiest way to do so is to change your ways and become a conscious eater. Plan your diet and meal times and eat a balanced diet of nutritious food. Over time you will be able to relax perhaps but for now you have identified an important health issue and must address it before it damages your health. this solution does not require motivation just decision. You know it makes sense.
:)

Emotionally driven behavior is more common than you think. If you change how you think it will change how you feel inside. Check this link out the info contained within has changed my life and eating habits forever!
http://clicksavy.filmpenner.hop.clickbank.net/

i do too. be careful. i have pancreas problems because i crave the wrong foods. it really is painful. i may have to have it removed if i don't get it under control. i don't even weigh that much. just be careful.

Emotional eating is a challenge more so because there is very little credible direction. I just read three top selling books on Amazon.com regarding emotional eating and none of them tell you how to deal with emotions. They make emotional eaters into mental cases. Basically they recycle old advice that's been published for decades and apply it to emotional eaters because it's become a buzz word.
I have a blog at http://emotionaleatingcure.blogspot.com/ that you may find valuable. Of course one of the purposes of it is to promote my book, The Scale Conspiracy, which goes ten steps further than any published book I've read about dealing with emotional eating.
The first step is to recognize the emotion which you did. The next step is to embrace the emotion and experience it which I have several chapters written to accomplish that goal. The third step is to re-reference or re focus--again another chapter.
And all three steps are done in seconds so you can discover how to forget about food and leave it out of the process.