Gratitude helps you see the positive aspects of your life, brightens your mood, and consequently reduces the need to eat to feel better.
How we feel – how happy we are, how stressed we are, even how well we sleep – may seem like it’s out of our hands, but it is actually often a choice we make. We can choose to be grateful for what we have and feel more blissful. Or we can choose to focus on what we’re lacking, who has wronged us, and what’s not going our way. And guess what? We’ll feel miserable. We may blame others, circumstances, or fate for our unhappiness. But at the end of the day, it’s often about us and the choices we make.
One of the simplest ways I find to be able to shift my mood is focusing on gratitude. Of course, sometimes that’s easier said than done.
But as a motivation to practice gratitude more often let’s see the benefits of gratitude, how you can easily integrate it into your life, and how practising gratitude helps to stop emotional eating.
Gratitude is an interesting emotion and it shows its own special brainwaves when measured on a CT scan.
Robert A. Emmons is the world’s leading scientific expert on gratitude. In a series of studies, he and his colleagues helped people systematically cultivate gratitude, usually by keeping a “gratitude journal” in which they regularly record the things for which they’re grateful.
They’ve studied more than one thousand people, from ages 8 to 80, and found that people who practice gratitude consistently for just three weeks report a lot of benefits.
The Mental Benefits Of Gratitude
Practising gratitude helps your overall mental health because you instantly have a better outlook on life. Don’t be surprised to walk away from a gratitude meditation or from your gratitude journal with a big smile on your face.
Of course, the benefits of practising gratitude don’t stop at increased happiness. Feeling more gratitude has been linked to a better self-image, less anxiety and even a reduction in depression.
This comes as no surprise to the scientists who have recorded increased levels of dopamine and serotonin after intentional gratitude meditations.
The Physical Benefits Of Gratitude
This is where it gets interesting.
It’s one thing to feel better emotionally, but the release of these “feel-good” hormones affects your physical body as well.
Gratitude reduces stress and with it, you sleep better, your blood pressure lowers, and you have more energy. As a result, you move more, leading to even better overall physical health.
Maybe your gratitude exercise motivates you to go out for a walk, getting more oxygen into your body and loading up on Vitamin D.
Being able to sleep soundly reduces appetite and less stress helps you make smarter food choices. All these things work hand in hand to turn you into a healthier and stronger version of yourself.
Gratitude is particularly important for heart health. By lowering blood pressure and reducing stress, you put less strain on your heart. The added exercise strengthens your heart muscle and sleep gives your cardiovascular system time to recover and heal overnight. With heart disease one of the leading causes of death in modern society, there’s never been a better time to practice gratitude and let go of stress.
Gratitude to stop emotional eating
Gratitude can be a powerful tool in managing emotional eating by shifting your focus from negative emotions to positive aspects of your life.
Since sleep deprivation, low energy, anxiety, stress, poor self-image and bad mood are common triggers for emotional eating, creating the habit of daily gratitude to improve these areas of your life will also help you stop emotional eating.
- Gratitude helps you see the positive aspects of your life. When you focus on the things you are thankful for, it can create a sense of contentment and reduce the need to seek comfort in food during times of stress or negative emotions. Instead of dwelling on what’s lacking or causing distress in your life, gratitude shifts your focus to what you have and what’s positive. This shift can help break the cycle of using food as a coping mechanism for negative emotions.
- Emotional eating is often linked to stress and negative emotions. As I showed you above, gratitude has been studied and they found that it reduces stress levels and promotes a sense of well-being. By cultivating gratitude, you may be better equipped to handle stress in healthier ways, rather than turning to food for comfort.
- Practising gratitude helps you become more aware of your emotions. By recognizing and acknowledging your feelings, you can gain a better understanding of the triggers for emotional eating.
- Gratitude encourages mindfulness, which can extend to your eating habits. When you are grateful, you are more likely to savour and appreciate your meals, instead of mindlessly eating everything you can get your hands on.
How to seamlessly incorporate gratitude into your life?
How can you tap into all these benefits of gratitude? By feeling more of it.
Of course, that’s easier said than done.
A great place to start is by creating a habit of thinking of at least one person or one thing you are deeply grateful for each morning as soon as you wake up. It sets the tone for the whole day and gets you off to a great start to reap these powerful benefits. Give it a try!
You might practice gratitude while you wait for your morning coffee to brew.
You might listen to a guided gratitude meditation or write in a gratitude journal.
Gratitude meditation is much simpler than it sounds. All you have to do is just reflect on all the people and things you are grateful for for a few minutes.
Keeping a gratitude journal is also simple. You just regularly write down things you are thankful for whenever you have a few minutes to spare. This practice can serve as a reminder of the positive aspects of your life, making it easier to resist the urge to turn to food when faced with emotional challenges.
My gratitude for you being here
To show my gratitude for you being here and reading this post, I gift you some gratitude affirmations as an inspiration.
You can download them here:
Gratitude Affirmations
I hope you’ll find something to be grateful for today and you can use gratitude to stop emotional eating 🙂
Getting help to manage emotional eating
Incorporating gratitude into your daily life is a powerful step towards overcoming emotional eating. If you’re looking for personalized guidance and support on your journey, my Eliminate Emotional Eating private coaching program might be the solution you need. Learn more about how I can help you achieve lasting positive changes from this free training: A 6-step strategy to stop feeling out of control around food. Feel free to reach out for a complimentary consultation to explore how we can work together to create a healthier, more balanced relationship with food.
