Taking Control of Boredom Eating

There are a lot of people in the world who feel bored. Their reason? They just do not know what to do. Being bored is like being in the middle, a transition, a gap, an in between. It is often felt when you have just accomplished something major in your life, and you do not know what"s next. The problem with boredom is, not knowing what to do about it.

What do you do when you are bored? You often look for something to do that"s interesting and will take away the boredom. For some, to escape boredom, they try to do different things, like start a hobby or do an extreme sport, challenging their bodies to come out of that boredom. Unfortunately, some turn to food. They are not hungry; they just would like to escape the boredom through eating, especially something that they crave for, a dish that they like since this can supposedly remove the boredom, thus the term boredom eating.

Boredom eating is basically filling in the temporary gap created by boredom through eating. Being bored is, not knowing what to do next, a sense of feeling lost and out of sorts. Food can help alleviate these feelings, even temporarily. It gives you a sense of something to do. Food is also a mood lifter, especially if the food taken is a favorite of yours. Unfortunately, whenever food is used as a form of escape from boredom, and you find that boredom commonly occurs in your life, there is a huge tendency for your body to get used to having something being chewed and ingested that even if you are not bored, you will still eat. And constant eating can lead to being overweight and obese especially if boredom becomes the excuse used to be able to eat.

Before the eating gets out of hand, and you wake up seeing yourself balloon to gigantic proportions, there are ways to get out of boredom and stop boredom eating. Since being bored is a work of the mind, then it is also the mind that should be tackled. And a technique that may be used is hypnosis.

Hypnosis is a technique which involves deep relaxation. Although quite controversial when it was first introduced, owing to the fact that it was used before as a magic trick, hypnosis can promote complete relaxation of the body and of the mind. Because of this, the mind becomes open to suggestion. It is at this stage that positive thoughts and inputs are given repetitively, so as to remove boredom and to relieve the mind of voracious eating. The person undergoing hypnotism is aware of what is happening. They just cannot differentiate between what is real and what is not. Therefore, giving suggestions on what can be done to alleviate the boredom as well as control eating urges will be most effective at this stage.

Another technique often used, together with hypnosis is NLP or neuro linguistic programming. With NLP, the mind is reprogrammed to think more positive by replacing negative assumptions into positive ones. This is accomplished through listening to audio recordings of affirmative statements to contradict the negative ones that trigger boredom eating.

Together with NLP and hypnosis is another technique known as guided imagery. With guided imagery, instead of using words, images are being visualized as a form of therapy to replace the negative feelings that trigger the boredom. They are asked to recreate in their mind certain events in their lives when they felt most content and happy. Through this, the feelings and thoughts of that happy event will then replace the boredom and anxiety felt at present, thus controlling the boredom eating.