Mindful Eating With A Gastric Band

What is hunger?

So now that you have a gastric band let’s talk about hunger:

Your Hunger

The first thing is to learn to recognise both physical and emotional hunger. You are probably wondering how do you recognise physical hunger and differentiate between the two? When you are physically hungry the hunger builds up gradually and when you eat this leads to a feeling of satisfaction. In contrast emotional eating builds suddenly and once you eat it leads to feelings of guilt and shame. Emotional hunger cannot be satisfied and despite eating the emotional hunger persists as food is not designed to satisfy emotions.

Healthy Mind

In order to develop a better understanding of emotional hunger you need to identify what the triggers are that lead you to eating:

How you feel, where you are and exposure to certain foods may trigger an urge for food
Triggers that start a food & eating behaviour fall into two groups:
Food ~ Usually high fat & sugar processed foods
Feelings ~ Happy, sad, angry, grieving
Situations ~ Watching TV, trip to the cinema, long journeys & even after exercise.

Triggers start a series of events much like a line of dominos falling. Learn to recognise, understand & manage what triggers your eating behaviour. This takes practice!

Identify your “trigger” feelings e.g. anger, hurt, exhaustion, sadness, happiness.

Remember….

These are simply emotions
They cannot “make” you do anything
These feelings have no power
YOU have control over your actions

Recognise the emotion for what it is

Recognise some types of food you choose may lead to overeating

Actively decide not to be fearful of food & eating

Change a situation or routine to manage it
Plan ahead and ask yourself, “What could I do instead?”
Recognise that food will never permanently satisfy emotion
Once you have identified the emotions that trigger your desire to eat, you can find other ways to comfort, nurture, calm & distract yourself without turning to food and eating

CHANGE

Having a gastric band means that you will need to accept and work with the change of different types:
Physical Change, Emotional Change, Relationship Change, Social Change & Behavioural Change

STEP ONE – ACCEPTANCE

Accept that change is not just about reduced size
Accepting behavioural change includes food & eating behaviours
Accept that change is hard work & ongoing

CHANGE

STEP TWO – RECOGNISE

Change may be uncomfortable
For many of us, it is more comfortable to remain as we are, exerting no effort.
Changing in size and shape is not always comfortable and may trigger difficult memories

At the start of every day, make yourself some promises, set yourself some goals:

I am going to change because………….
I am WORTH it because…………………
I WILL change to achieve………………
TODAY I am going to…………………….
TODAY when I achieve……… I will praise myself
I ACCEPT I may lapse & that is ok – I will use it as an opportunity to learn more about myself

Remember the Eight Golden Rules to be successful with your gastric band and along with being more mindful and developing coping strategies for when the emotional hunger creeps in you be in control of your mind, band and your life!