Unhealthy Eating Habits

Fast Food/ Take Out

Don't be fooled; even the so-called "healthy" menu options at fast food and take out restaurants are loaded with hidden fats, sugar and sodium. If eating fast food is one of your unhealthy eating habits, you need to make a change. Until you are over halfway to your weight loss goal you should not even darken the doorway of a fast food/take out restaurant. Chose instead to prepare nutritious and healthy menus at home and bring a nutritious snack along with you wherever you do to avoid temptation. Break these unhealthy eating habits and you will save money too.

Sweets

You can break this one of your unhealthy eating habits simply by eliminating it. Stop buying sweets; period. If you love to cook and bake delicious home-baked goods you must not eat them. Donate them instead to a worthy cause or give them as gifts. If you cannot avoid the temptation of one of the tastiest of the unhealthy eating habits, you must refrain. An addiction to sweets is one of the hardest of the unhealthy eating habits to break, but once you do, you will see the dramatic weight loss that follows

Late-Night Snacking

This is one of the most common of the unhealthy eating habits we've found. If you are a late-night snack fiend, you have some work to do. Get rid of all the fatty, processed, high calorie foods in your home

(even your secret stash). Replace them instead with nutritious options that you can grab if you get a late-night craving. Have some low fat yogurt, cottage cheese or other low or nonfat dairy options at the ready. These foods will satisfy your cravings, and will help you to get a good night's sleep as well.

Bingeing / Overeating

If you are one of the millions of people with this unhealthy eating habit, you will have to learn some new ones. Re-train yourself to control your portion size and learn to recognize what your body feels like when it is hungry and when it is satisfied. If you eat by the clock you may be overeating without even knowing it. You would do well to get a portion scale, read labels diligently, and restrict eating to several small meals throughout the day. Wait until your body signals that you are hungry before you sit down to munch. Take away tempting foods and train your body to crave the taste of fresh fruits and vegetables. Many of these foods are "guilt-free" and you can eat as much as you like.

Emotional Eating

This last in our list of unhealthy eating habits is also quite common. Emotional eaters will also likely be bingers or overeaters as well. These two unhealthy eating habits often go hand in hand. How do you know if you are an emotional eater? Do you eat when you are nervous, upset or angry? Does the act of sitting down to eat calm you and give you a feeling of well-being you don't otherwise have? If the answer to these questions is "yes", than you may be an emotional eater. This is one of the most difficult of the unhealthy eating habits to break. Many people need to see a counselor or dietary consultant in order to do so. You must get to the root of your emotional problems and develop a new way of dealing with unpleasant feeling other than with food. A new relationship to food and a new way of relating is what is needed for the emotional eater.

If you recognize yourself in any of these descriptions; good for you! You have made an important step towards replacing unhealthy eating habits with good ones and are on your way to diet success.


Kate Trillin is a freelance writer who specializes in proper nutrition, unhealthy eating habits [http://blog.healthadventurer.com/daily-healthy-diet/identifying-unhealthy-eating-habits/], and healthy living. She has been an avid health enthusiast for the past 5 years, and has recently ventured into the world of online publishing in an effort to reach a wider audience. Her writing focuses on providing tips and useful information on the importance of knowing the unhealthy eating habits [http://blog.healthadventurer.com/daily-healthy-diet/identifying-unhealthy-eating-habits/].