Many people eat when they are feeling bored and have nothing else to do. Why is this and how can you stop yourself from eating when bored?

Addiction

If you feel the need to eat when you are bored then you really have an addiction, not dissimilar to a cigarette smoker who is trying to give up but gets irritable when they can't have a cigarette and have nothing else to occupy their mind.

In this case, the addiction is not to food but to "excess food" i.e. food over and above what your body actually needs.

When your mind is not occupied with anything else, you will actually feel like you are lacking something until you get the food that you want. The solution to this is to understand exactly what is going on.

Are You Hungry Or Not?

The body has an ingenious method for helping us to eat the right amount of food: hunger.

When we are hungry, we eat. When we have a little hunger, we eat a little. When we have a lot of hunger, we eat much more. When we are no longer hungry, we stop eating.

This is a concept that has worked for millions of years on our planet for many different types of animals. It is only in the last few hundred years that we have seen the concept of obesity and it affects only humans and domesticated animals.

When you are bored and you want to eat, think back to the last time you ate and how much you had. Then look within yourself and ask whether you really have genuine hunger? If you do, then eat something. If you don't, then don't eat anything!

If you find yourself wanting to eat when you are bored then it is almost certainly not genuine hunger. It is just part of the addiction that you have to getting instant pleasure from food and abusing it by eating more than your body needs. See it for what it is and ignore it.

Long Term Weight Loss

Losing weight in the long term and getting rid of the addiction to excess food first requires an understanding of the above concepts and a realization that this is also happening to you.

Secondly, it requires a radical change in your approach to your food and your way of life. Start to eat more healthily because it is much better for both body and mind and will help quash your hunger pangs, whether genuine or not. Eat more fruits and vegetables as well as low glycaemic index foods. Above all, get used to eating only when you are hungry.