Is boredom eating holding you back?

Does your fridge door open and close more times than a cat flap at a cattery?

Are you looking to graze at times of boredom or when "there's nothing better to do"?

In a survey we recently ran, boredom eating was the most prevalent type of emotional eating; above tiredness, upset or emotional eating of any other kind.

(And it could be because Facebook is where people often go when they are bored...) but most of us can sympathise with having moments of boredom where food acts as a nice stop gap.

The reality of this "nice stop gap" is likely a contributing reason to why you are following us in the first place.

Boredom eating can lead to low confidence and frustration stemming from weight gain, ill health, or just annoyance at our own habits.

It's not as simple as just finding things that interest us to distract ourselves. If this worked, then it would be an easy fix.

The issue is that our habits and actions lie below the surface of our conscious mind and in the emotional realms. As such it's not just distracting ourselves, we also need to change the way we think about high calorie food AND the levels of happiness in our lives in general.

This might sound a bit deep for a fat loss coach, but in our (now just over) 7 years working online people are becoming aware of a need for more than just a meal and workout plan and "calories in vs calories out" and are looking at the why. Namely because those approaches don't work for the masses and behaviour change at a deeper level is what's needed.

Whilst the mechanism itself is simple (calories in vs out) this doesn't mean it's easy to action consistently. It's easy to confuse simple with easy, but in this case, they are poles apart.

We can impact boredom eating by changing what we eat, the way we look at high-calorie food and mindful eating of high-calorie food.

Overcoming boredom eating is NOT the same as not eating high-calorie food. I'd argue it's more effective to manage boredom eating by keeping high-calorie food in than to take it out.

This ensures we don't fall into an all or nothing approach, one where you push too hard, and ignore the warning signs, only to overeat out of desperation eventually.

(All of these are covered in my new free download and workbook by the way!)

We also need to look at why we are bored. What is missing from our lives? Why are we feeling discontent, disconnected and disinterested? The solution to this is harder to find than just "Watch Netflix for an hour" and as is always the way, we have to change more than we'd like to, in order to get the change we desire.

You are unlikely to overcome boredom eating by taking up knitting (not that I've anything against knitting) but we have to accept there is more to our boredom, and more to our use of food to manage it, than what we see in the moment where we break, give in and eat.

I've created a free guide and workbook (expertly designed by the lovely Amy) to take you through the 5 stages you need to go through to give yourself the best chance of stopping boredom eating. And by proxy, live a happier, more engaged connected life full of pleasure and purpose.

If you're interested in getting a free copy of the guide and workbook, simply comment on this post now with the word "workbook" and I'll send this over to you.