Emotional Eating is a common stress release, or reward choice, for most of us. Using food as a way to work through our feelings, we lower the intensity, or even numb uncomfortable emotions by chewing, grazing, searching, tasting, craving, overeating or even binging. Unfortunately, eating can lead to guilt or shame when we do it for soothing rather than to stop hunger. In Susan Albers book "50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food", the author of Eating Mindfully, offers 5 other choices to replace stress eating.

1- Mindful Meditation Techniques

You may consider yourself to be in better than average shape (after all you are a Mountain Trek Veteran). Now at home as part of your integration plan you’ve been hiking 3 times a week in close by local parks. Some friends come into town for the holidays and you decide to go biking. No problem, you're in great shape, right? Wrong. After a day on the bike you feel like you've been run over by Santa's sleigh and all his reindeer. What's going on?

Joanne Holden of the USDA’s Nutrient Data Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., reported to the Chicago Tribune that the USDA has the world’s largest database with information on 100 nutrients for over 7500 foods.  The lab’s main purpose is to manage databases, including the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, the “gold standard” for nutritionists and the food industry.   The USDA database of 100 nutrients is remarkably small compared to the thousands of nutrients, like antioxidants and phytochemicals, that we now know exist.