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Wellness Coach Deborah Kesten describes the number one reason women overeat.
Deborah Kesten:
One of the main causes, if not the main cause of overeating, is emotional eating. You eat out of negative emotions, depression and anxiety, and it’s kind of a vicious cycle because when you are eating lots of high-fat food and lots of sugary food and processed food, white flour kind of stuff, it doesn’t have all the vitamins and minerals that full, complete food has. Sugar is just sugar; it just has calories. White flour is mostly just white flour; it doesn’t have all of the germ in it. We’ve heard wheat germ; it’s kind of an archetypal health food. The germ’s been removed. That’s what the life force is, that’s where the good fats are, that’s where eight of the B vitamins are, the whole B vitamin family is in there, and so the fiber has been removed.
And so, what you are taking in when you have white flour is mostly, as with sugar, mostly just calories, although there are some nutrients in it. The point being ,when you are not getting what you really want, you start craving food, and when you have food that doesn’t have balanced nutrients in it because it has been processed, highly processed, then you can get depressed because it’s going to start to metabolize sugar, it will take some nutrients out of your cells to help metabolize it because it has to be metabolized.
And so you compound the problem. You are not taking in enough nutrients to keep your mind-body happy and healthy, and then you are eating food that’s highly processed, which further depletes your body of nutrients which can contribute to your depression.
So the point being, I am suggesting that eat what you want, and when you want sweets, enjoy it. The question is, the problem isn’t sugar, the problem isn’t carbs, the problem is what are you generally, usually, sort of, most of the time eating in addition to the chocolate chip cookies or the Haagen Dazs or whatever? And that is the key question: What are you usually eating most of the time?
About Deborah Kesten, M.P.H.:
Deborah Kesten, M.P.H., is an international nutrition and lifestyle researcher and educator, with a specialty in preventing and reversing obesity and heart disease. She was the nutritionist on Dr. Dean Ornish’s first clinical trial for reversing heart disease through lifestyle changes, and Director of Nutrition on similar research at cardiovascular clinics in Europe. More recently, she has created the pioneering Enlightened Diet, a “whole person” optimal eating and weight loss program, the results of which were published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing. With more than 200 published health articles, she is the award-winning author of The Enlightened Diet, Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul and The Healing Secrets of Food, a comprehensive, evidence-based nutrition program about the power of food to heal physically, emotionally, spiritually, and socially.
Visit Deborah Kesten at her website