Girlfriends make us healthier – right? What about their impact on eating disorders that so many girls and women suffer from?

In preparation for this week’s Girlfriendology BlogTalkRadio show interview with emotional eating coach, ELLEN SHUMAN, I did a little research on emotional eating and some of the cues that we (or a girlfriend) might be dealing with this serious issue.

Per About.com (trustworthy source), “Emotional eating is the practice of consuming large quantities of food — usually “comfort” or junk foods — in response to feelings instead of hunger. Some of the common emotional eating cues are:

1. Anger

2. Hopelessness

3. Lack of Control

4. Feeling Unappreciated

5. Boredom”

See the full article at Emotional Eating Triggers – How to Identify Emotional Eating Triggers.

We’ll talk with Ellen about how girlfriends can influence and support friends dealing with binge eating and emotional eating disorders. In the meantime though, research does confirm that female friendships make women healthier, happier, less stressed, live longer and feel more beautiful.

Each one of these ’side effects of female friendship‘ can counteract the emotional eating triggers noted above. For example, a girlfriend conversation can calm anger, restore hope and help you explore ways to gain control of your life. Friendship makes you feel appreciated and gives you fun things to do together. And, women with supportive friends are much more likely to escape the emotional hold of eating disorders with the encouragement and faith of their girlfriends.

While girlfriends can definitely help, emotional eating is a complicated and challenging topic. To deal with it, you need to have a source of information you can trust – like a girlfriend. You can trust Ellen. She knows what she’s talking about. And, you’ll appreciate her ‘girlfriend-ly’ way of dealing with these serious topics.

So, join us on Friday at 2:00pm EST/11:00am PDT at BlogTalkRadio.com/Girlfriendology. Call in or chat your questions for Ellen. And, if you have a friend who is dealing with emotional eating (or whose child may be), please share this information so she can join us too. This is a serious topic and Ellen’s previous podcast interview on Girlfriendology was one of our most popular – because she is so knowledgeable and this topic happens so frequently among women.

For more information on Ellen and her emotional eating coaching, visit her site – A Weigh Out. She’s been on Oprah twice, featured in O Magazine and has impacted the lives of thousands who deal with this serious issue of emotional eating.

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Tags: Eating disorder, friendship, O The Oprah Magazine, oprah

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 at 2:47 pm and is filed under Be a Better FRIEND. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.