How you feel and deal with stress can often be a contributing factor towards why you

find it difficult to lose weight. Despite your best efforts to eat healthily and exercise

regularly, stressful situations can often throw you off track causing you to

unconsciously overeat or indulge in naughty foods.

If this sounds like you, there are a number of tricks you can utilise to help regain control of your weight loss, and ensure stressful situations do not deter you from your ambition to lose weight.

Tip One: Listen to your hunger – when are your greatest urges to eat? Is it because you are bored, feeling tired or simply want to experience comfort? Often what we think is hunger, is our body using food to overcome boredom. For this reason it is important that you begin listening to your body, recognising your triggers and

acknowledging that boredom is prompting you to snack.

Try this the next time you find yourself going to the fridge - drink a glass of water. If after 15 minutes you still feel hungry then you can snack on a cracker or a piece of fruit. More often than not though, you’ll find that this urge to eat has gone saving you on hundreds of unnecessary calories.

Tip Two: Learn to relax – stress creeps up on us in many different ways, and often because we are so used to feeling stressed we do not realise we are. To prevent stress from taking you by surprise begin taking part in yoga and meditation. These have been proven to alleviate stress, but also speed up your metabolism making

losing weight even easier.

Tip Three: Keep a food journal – for a two week period, write down everything you ate throughout the day. At the same time, keep a record of how you felt at the time.

Did you feel stressed, depressed or upset, or were you actually hungry? You’ll soon notice that nearly half your daily calories are being consumed when you are feeling emotional, and that many of these foods are high in calories. By identifying these triggers, you can begin to re-train your reactions so that the next time you reach for a chocolate bar, your mind will recognise that stress is prompting you to do so and will give you the motivation to put it down.

When it comes to losing weight, you don’t have to let your work, emotions or stress control you. By incorporating each of the above tips into your week weight loss plan, you can confidently begin to get to know your triggers and take your first steps to becoming the boss of your eating habits, not your feelings.