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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Does Online Forex Trading Cause Overeating?

By Danielle Franklin

As forex trader you spend hours next to your computer. Day becomes night, night becomes day and you lose yourself in currency trading chaos. Sometimes you forget about the world outside your monitor. Sometimes food is the last thing on your mind. And sometimes you have an incredible urge to nibble something tasty while you trade. Does online forex trading causes the unhealthy diet? Do forex traders overeat?

Working from home isn't an easy task. It is important to follow some kind of schedule or you will fall into an "I-no-longer-care-about-myself" hole. Trading is amazing, exciting and thrilling job, but I met many forex traders that lose track of their non-forex life.

The most widely acknowledged problem is overeating. Either you forget to eat at all and then approach your refrigerator like tropical cyclone or you constantly nosh on everything you lay your eyes on (well, more like your fingers, since your eyes are too busy looking at charts).

Overeating has biological and emotional reasons. If you trade online without eating in between for a long time, most probably you will overeat at the next meal. When you tear that refrigerator door off you will feel no control over your eating because your biological clock was set to "food-break" a long time ago.

Emotional reason for overeating can be anything from stress to anger. If you lose a trade you are most likely to end up pissed off for a while. That's when the angry eating starts. It can be Ben and Jerry ice cream or steak with mash potatoes - the result is the same. You end up eating more than you need.

Actually, you don't need to be stressed or angry to be an emotional overeater. The so called "stillness" can turn you into a nibbling machine within seconds. An emotional reason can just be a small portion of nothingness. Trading forex requires multitasking and a lot of action from each one of us, so whenever there is calmness forex trader might turn for extra bite! Suddenly the eyes are free to look and the hands are free to grab that cookie! And instead of having just couple of pieces you end up overeating... maybe because you think there will be no other time to do so. The researchers say that people overeat while watching TV. I guess starring at charts and making decisions about trading orders can be considered a perfect condition for overeating too.

Enough of "theory", what is the solution? How to stay slim while trading online?

1. Make sure that you are not "biologically" hungry. Ask yourself when was the last time you ate and whether it was a good meal.

2. If the hunger has nothing to do with your physical state, try to figure out what cases you to feel this way. Is it stress? Adrenalin? Sadness? Anger? Happiness? Loneliness? Boredom (unlikely, but who knows!)?

3. Ask yourself what will help to eliminate this state of mind. Maybe there is more effective solution than a cookie. For example, you might feel lonely, so maybe this is the right time to turn off the monitor and meet with your friends, or go out with your girlfriend, or maybe take your dog for a walk.

4. Always remember that at nighttime it gets tricky. Hunger and emotions blend together and it is even more difficult to figure out the real cause.

The bottom line is that if you don't overeat on a daily basis, there is probably nothing to worry about. You should, however, take a look at your emotions if overeating occurs on regular basis. It could be that you use food to cope with certain difficult aspects of forex trading, since it is our mind and not our stomach that controls the eating habits.


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