50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food (9 page)

I don’t have a lot of time to exercise and I’m not very good at it. But I have to admit that once I get started, I feel so great. When my daughter turned two, I actually got more exercise than I ever did in my life before. I didn’t get it in a gym. It was simply constantly running after her.

—Kim

If you don’t already work out to soothe yourself, it’s likely that getting enough exercise is a real challenge for you. You probably love the feeling you get when you do work out or when you go for a brisk walk. But you can’t seem to motivate yourself to do it regularly, despite the emotional rewards. Moving your body releases a flood of feel-good chemicals, such as endorphins and neurotransmitters, that elevate your mood.

If you have blamed a lack of time and energy as the major hurdle to regular exercise, the good news is that you don’t have to go to the gym to get the benefits of these natural, soothing chemicals. There are many effortless ways you can move your body that take very little time, sweat, or money. You don’t have to go out of your way to get exercise. It’s likely that you do get some exercise just from your normal daily activities. If so, it’s important to be mindful of this and to acknowledge it.

A study by Crum and Langer (2007) looked at maids who didn’t work out in a gym but got exercise doing their cleaning jobs. The only intervention the researchers made was to emphasize that scrubbing and cleaning is exercise. They educated the maids on how many calories are burned while doing jobs like scrubbing and dusting. Researchers also told the participants the many other ways this type of exercise benefited their bodies. The outcome was surprising. Participants lost weight, their blood pressure dropped, and they were found to be significantly healthier on several measures. Simply acknowledging their movement as exercise (rather than changing their behavior) led to significant health benefits. So the next time you run after your child on the playground or walk up two flights of stairs, pay attention to it. Say to yourself, “This is great exercise!”

~self-soothing technique~

Going to the Life Gym

Make a list of the natural, effortless ways that you can get exercise. You may not have thought of these activities as exercise because they don’t take place in a gym. But activities like carrying bags of groceries up flights of stairs, running after kids, vacuuming, and transferring from a subway to a bus are all forms of exercise. After making your list, find ways to increase the physical intensity just a bit. For example, carry only one grocery bag at a time up the stairs to make more trips. Make extra trips to the copy machine. Plan an extremely romantic night to lengthen the time of vigorous sex.

Increase Your Heart Rate in Less Than Five Minutes

• Do forty jumping jacks. You may want to commit to doing them during commercials.
  
• Do fifty hula hoop circular motions. If you don’t have a hula hoop, imagine having one around your middle and rotate your hips around.
  
• Lie on the floor, hold your legs up, and move your legs in circles, as though you are riding a bike, until you tire and can’t keep your legs up in the air any longer.
  
• Dance to one entire song. Keep moving from the start to the finish of the song.
  
• Have sex. Any kind of sexual activity that leads you to become aroused releases mood-elevating chemicals in the body.
  

Each day that you exercise, put a sticker on a wall calendar. Code the stickers for different healthy behaviors—a blue star could signify walking, and a yellow sticker biking. Notice whether the frequency of your emotional eating drops when you increase the amount of exercise you get. Aim for at least thirty minutes of activity a day.

I work the night shift at the emergency room. When I get home, I’m all wound up from dealing with an endless stream of accident and critical patients. By the time I kick off my shoes at home, I’m physically and emotionally tapped out. Instead of going to bed, I have a very bad habit of staying up late, which leads to snacking. I circle my kitchen like an airplane stuck in a holding pattern. Then I sit in front of the computer and munch on pretzels trying to get out of my postwork funk. When I simply go to bed and don’t binge, I wake up the next day totally refreshed and feeling like a rational human being again. If not, I’m cleaning out everything in the fridge.

—Rhonda

We often underplay the value and necessity of sleep. Sometimes we even take pride in ourselves for how little sleep we can get by with. Sleeping is not only soothing, it’s essential. Without enough of it, you can feel edgy, and you’re much more vulnerable to uncontrolled eating. Sleeping also helps you to clear your mind. After a good night’s sleep, you may notice that you have a fresh perspective on matters. In part, this may be due to interrupting a negative stream of thoughts.

Neuroscientists believe that sleep may help people process their feelings and remember facts. For example, if you take a test, you will remember more if you study and then sleep than if you were to stay up studying all night. Think about how this applies to emotional eating. It’s likely you will think more clearly and feel less emotionally wound up in the morning. A clearer head equals more balanced eating.

Getting a good night’s sleep can even help you manage your waistline (Jones, Johnson, and Harvey-Berino 2008; Marshall, Glozier, and Grunstein 2008). The two hormones that control appetite are called leptin and ghrelin. When your sleep is too short, these hormones become unbalanced. Sleep-deprived people tend to have low amounts of leptin and high amounts of ghrelin. This leads to an increase in appetite. The imbalance, due to shortened sleep, may contribute to obesity. So getting a good night’s sleep may not only help your mood, it may also help stabilize your appetite.

~self-soothing technique~

Mindfully Accept Sleep

• When you consider trying to get more sleep, do you say to yourself, “I have too much to do”? If so, work on giving yourself permission to sleep more. Sleep actually regenerates your body and will make you feel refreshed and more productive. Mindfully accept the need for sleep, even if it doesn’t fit well into your plans.
  
• Consider that seven to nine hours of sleep a night is optimal (Jones, Johnson and Harvey-Berino 2008). Fewer hours than that, and you may be putting yourself at risk for stress eating and increasing your weight.
  
• If you have the urge to eat, try to take a quick catnap to recharge your batteries.
  
• Check in with your body. Are you low in energy? Do you want to eat to give yourself a little boost? Emotional eaters often turn to food for comfort when they are low in energy. Think about whether more sleep would give you the kind of energy you are seeking from food.
  
• If you don’t have time to take a nap right now or you aren’t close to a bed, just fold your arms and put your head down on your desk. Allow yourself to rest your mind for a moment. Breathe deeply.
  
• If you have trouble sleeping, try valerian tea, which is reputed to help people sleep. (But do check with your doctor to make sure it’s okay.)
  

There is a well-known saying “When all else fails, take a bath.” This is pretty good advice. At night, taking a soothing bath is now part of my routine instead of munching on peanuts and Fritos. The bubbles and warm water melt away my stress much better and for longer than snack foods. If I’m thinking about food when I step in the shower, by the time I’m done, all such thoughts are gone.

—Jill

Hydrotherapy has been around since the time of the ancient Romans. They built bathhouses for bathing as well as for healing physical ailments. Heat and water are two of nature’s most powerful healers. When they are blended together, they do a great job at gently massaging and relaxing the body.

Not only does a hot shower or tub feel great, it has clinical benefits. The medicinal power of hot tubs has been explored (Cox, Bernstein, and Hooper 2000), patients with type 2 diabetes used a hot tub thirty minutes a day, six days a week. After only ten days, they reported that they’d lost weight, needed smaller doses of insulin, slept better, and felt an increased sense of well-being.

In addition to the physical benefits, a bath or shower is often within easy reach and offers a private space to reenergize. Rarely do people dare to bother you there. However, many people don’t get the full emotional benefits of a soothing shower because they bring their problems right into the shower stall with them, instead of checking them at the door. They may be among those who can cry only in the privacy of their own bathroom. They use the shower to hide their feelings rather than to wash them away.

If this sounds like you, consider taking a new kind of a bath, a mindful bath.

~self-soothing technique~

Taking a Mindful Bath

A mindful bath is one that you take alone, not with the hundred concerns you have.

• As you scrub, try to stop replaying ever worry and problematic conversation in your mind. Instead, allow yourself to be keenly aware of what is happening to your body. Focus on the drops of water on your arms. Inhale the aroma of the soap. If you see your mind being drawn back into your list of daily stresses, just bring your thoughts back to the moment by focusing on physical sensations.
  
• Before you step into the bath or shower, gather up some soothing bath lotions, bath salts, and oils. Bubbles, particularly scented ones, trap the scents. These bubbles send calming aromas to the brain. The olfactory nerve is closely connected to the limbic system, the part of the brain that manages emotion. This means that if you send pleasant scents to your brain, they are likely to stimulate soothing feelings.
  
• If it is hard to let go of your worries, it may be helpful to use imagery. As you massage the shampoo into your hair, imagine washing away your negative thoughts.
  
• We all unwind in different ways, especially when submerged in water. Create a soothing ritual. Play the same music. Get a fluffy, white robe to relax in after your bath or shower.
  
• Instead of a taking bath, create your own facial steamer. Put hot water into a bowl. Place your face over the bowl at a safe distance, then drape a towel over your head to trap the steam rising from the bowl of hot water. Leave yourself enough ventilation to breathe comfortably.
  
• If it’s the middle of the day and taking a shower is simply impossible, head to the bathroom and place your hands under warm water for a minute. Focus your mind on the sensations of the water washing over your hands.
  

Most people think cleaning is a terrible chore. But scrubbing and organizing is incredibly soothing to me. I have an endless number of drawers to organize. It feels very productive and it takes my mind off the Twinkies that are hanging out in my cupboard.

—Jenna

For the purposes of soothing, the point of cleaning is to keep yourself busy, give yourself a productive project that will give you a sense of accomplishment, and get your body moving. Notice this is not about having a spick-and-span house or having things clean and perfectly in order. The goal is to get your body and mind engaged in an active and rewarding project.

Housework can be exhausting when you have a long list of chores to do, you feel you must do it all, or it’s intended to please other people. This cleaning technique is about helping yourself and no one else. It’s not to get things done or even to get the house clean, but to help you cope with whatever is driving you toward food.

~self-soothing technique~

Scrub Away Stress Eating

• Make an emergency cleaning box. It’s frustrating to have to look for a sponge when you are trying to stop emotional eating.
  
• Organize a closet or a drawer in your desk. Pick one small project. If you choose too large an area, you might feel overwhelmed and therefore could feel worse.
  
• Determine what kind of cleaning you enjoy. Maybe you hate to wash windows but love to iron because you can stand in place. Perhaps you like to sweep quietly but dislike vacuuming because it is too loud. If you are a detail person, scrubbing tile may be the way to go, instead of tossing a big load of laundry into the washer.
  

When I’m overwhelmed with life, I am a champion stress eater. I get into this mood where I don’t care what I am eating. I actually do care, later, but I don’t have the emotional energy to make one more decision. Eating helps me to tone down my anxiety. Since I will never be free of daily hassles, I have to find a way to cope with it. Shutting off my cell phone, for example, for even an hour, helps me to slow down and gives me some time alone to recharge.

—Carrie

Imagine you are driving a car. Suddenly, you realize you’ve made a wrong turn. What is one of the first things you might do, even unconsciously? It’s likely you will turn off the radio. You try to reduce every kind of extra stimulation and distraction. Will this help you find the turn you should have made? It’s not likely. But turning off the radio reduces the clutter your brain must sort through to focus on finding the right turnoff.

You might fall into the trap of stress eating because you feel overwhelmed by everything going on around you. If you cringe each time your cell phone rings or when you hear loud music, your body may be on overload. When your senses are constantly in use and are continually processing information, overstimulation results. Your eyes and ears don’t have a chance to rest. Eating may be a way of trying to temporarily tone down or drown out the barrage of sensations you experience during the day.

Overstimulation is a common problem among young infants. People who play with babies often overdo it with cooing and singing too close to the child’s face. A baby often averts his or her eyes from an adult’s to gain a quiet moment. Teenagers are also vulnerable to being overstimulated. Too many flashy video games, lights, and gadgets with bells and whistles can make their brains a little dizzy. Both children and adults can benefit from giving their senses a rest. Doing that can help you to focus and to soothe yourself.