When you wake up in the morning, does the snugness of your pants determine your mood? Do you find that when you do start to lose weight, you quickly self-sabotage those results and binge eat until you experience the horrible feeling of "food guilt?" If so, you may be an emotional eater. In truth, at a certain level, we are all emotional eaters. Happy, sad, bored, lonely, frustrated or anxious – we eat! However, if you are in a continual pattern of emotional eating and it is holding you back from reaching your weight loss and health goals, it is time to examine this issue and break the emotional eating pattern for good.

When people gain and lose weight over and over again, there is more than just bad food choices underlying the issue. Our relationship with food is one of the most intimate and potentially addictive relationships we create from an early age. If we use food to soothe, numb, celebrate, or for any other emotional purposes we run the risk that food will always be at the core of these emotions.

Without taking care of the emotional baggage that may be at the core of your food issues, you will run the risk of being a "lifer" in the weight loss world. Rather than counting calories, it is far wiser to dive down to a deeper level of awareness about your eating habits and to bring back a level consciousness about the way you are eating. By doing so, you will be in charge of your food choices instead of your food choices being in charge of you.

How do you know if you are an emotional eater? A few classic behaviours include;
• Trying repetitively but failing to keep weight off
• Feeling frantic and out of control when eating
• Eating frequently when not hungry
• Binge eating large proportions of unhealthy food items
• Late night eating
• Thinking about food often
• Sabotaging good feelings and weight loss attempts
• Turning to food during times of stress or despair
• Continuing to eat - even when full
• Feels guilty after a food binge (i.e. I will skip meal tomorrow, exercise more etc.)

Things to consider:
• Emotional eating is sudden and involves automatic, absent minded eating
• Emotional eating is a "need" for a specific food and has nothing to do with physical hunger

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