Food as a source of comfort

There are many other traps. For most of us, the food is not just food. It can be everything from love to the therapeutic agent. It is an incentive and consolation, it soothes and encourages. "To say that the food is only needed to sustain life, says psychologist from California, Joyce Nash, Ph.D., author of" How to use the opportunity of his body as much as possible, "it is like talking about sex only as a way to produce offspring."
For some food satisfies different types of hunger. Recent studies have shown that people traumatized as children have suffered sexual violence, have lost their parents or are not getting enough love and attention, can use food as a means to ensure a comfortable state. "Like children who do not know how to cope with feelings overwhelm them, they begin to do what makes him feel good, and the bad habits remain a long time," says Dr. Kolotkin.
"Food can distract from the existing problems," says Dr. Our. It serves as a refuge, a way to avoid problems or to adapt to them.
"It is right to treat food helped me visit a support group, says Cassie Herold, set a goal to get rid of the extra 60 pounds she gained during the last eight years and one pregnancy. In the classroom each one of us asked why we eat. Going around the table, people were told that they eat because experience anxiety because they are oppressed because they are sad, and no one said that he eats, because it is hungry. We use food as a remedy for all that we were concerned. "
Dr. Our call it "the law of the hammer."
"Hammer law says that when we find a solution or mechanism to adjust, we use it in all cases, even when he can not help. We do not realize that to solve different problems need different tools, "she says.
Indeed, in the study by Susan Cayman, a public health doctor, and her colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley, noted that women who talk, interrupted classes on the program, when convinced that this technique is not for them, but they still lost weight ".
Women who have successfully kept the weight after weight loss, were not as likely to use food to get away from the complexities of life. For example, they do not turn to food when found themselves in the face of family difficulties. They realized that the candy will not help solve the problems of the child, that apple pie does not return the marriage disintegrated, they were looking for real solutions. "On the other hand, those who are gaining weight again, argue in this way: if they are not able to solve the problem, they will use the old proven tool, ie, will have to feel better, "says Dr. Cayman.