Overcoming Emotional Eating with Jenny Craig

Thank you Jenny Craig for sponsoring this post. — Get serious about losing weight with Jenny Craig!

It’s been a little over four weeks since my weight loss journey began on the Jenny Craig program. Last year, I gained about 15 pounds by turning to comfort food to help ease the pain of a nerve injury. I really struggled with controlling my appetite. All I wanted was a box of cookies or a bag of chips to help take my mind off the pain.

Identifying My Eating Style

Over the past few weeks, I’ve worked with my amazing consultant Samantha to identify and overcome my emotional eating. The first step was clarifying my eating style. The Jenny Craig Getting Started Guide mentions the following:

Uniformed Eater: Confused about what really works for them and rarely stays committed to one approach.

Social Eater: Struggles with self-control when dealing with a variety of people, places and events.

Emotional Eater: Resorts to food to calm, soothe or even squelch feelings.

Unconscious Eater: Misses meals, grazes throughout the day or eats food just because it’s there.

After discussing these styles with Samantha, we agreed that I am an emotional eater. When I am in pain, feeling sad or stressed, food becomes my best friend.

Tips to Help With Emotional Eating

The Jenny Craig goal for an emotional eater is to cope with emotions without turning to food. One of my favorite new ways to deal with stress is taking a bubble bath. Turns out this helps relieve my nerve pain too! Other ideas include:

• Taking a walk
• Talking to a friend
• Writing in my journal
• Listening to music

I’ve also learned to be aware of triggers that Jenny Craig calls “H.A.L.T.” The goal is to make sure that I don’t let myself get to Hungry, Angry/anxious, Lonely/sad, or Tired/board.

Having the prepared and portion-controlled Jenny Craig meals and snacks make it easy for me to make smart food choices instead of grabbing comfort foods that are high in sugar and calories. A few of my favorite dishes include the Cinnamon Swirl French Toast, Turkey Burger, and the Southwest Style Chicken Fajita Bowl.

The best part is that I don’t feel deprived. I make sure to reward myself with a Jenny Craig treat like Kettle Corn or Lemon Cake each night after dinner.

Emotional Eating and Travel

Family vacations and business travel can also side track my weight loss goals. I worked with Samantha to come up with a plan for two business trips and an upcoming family vacation. Having a plan in place helps me feel confident that I’ll succeed even when circumstances seem out of my control. This reduces the stress and emotional triggers of my eating style.

My Travel Plan:

• Pack shelf stable foods like snack bars, cereal, popcorn, soups, etc.
• Picture Jenny Craig portions when eating away from home to help keep in control
• Limit alcohol consumption, which can lower self control for emotional eaters

Since I am close to my weight loss goal, I’m working with Samantha to create a plan that is about half my own meals and half Jenny Craig. Having a dedicated consultant has really been paramount to my success. I look forward to our chats each week.

Jenny Craig has helped me develop a healthy relationship with food. I still have some challenges ahead, buy I’ve learned positive coping strategies to better support my weight management goals.

I am thrilled to announce that in a little over 4 weeks, I have lost a total of 12 pounds*. I’m happy to love my scale again instead of dreading each time I check my weight.

*Results not typical. Members following the Jenny Craig program, on average, lose 1-2 lbs. per week. I received promotional consideration

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of CLEVER and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

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