Emotional Eating
When you reach for food in times of sadness, stress, boredom, or loneliness, you are emotionally eating. Emotional eating is a very common disorder and can affect both men and women. Food does a lot more than satisfy our hunger, it fills any void in our lives and gives us a feeling of instant gratification.
Emotional Hunger and Physical Hunger:
- Physical hunger happens gradually; emotional hunger happens suddenly
- Eating to fill a void that doesn’t have to do with hunger, you crave certain foods, like pizza or ice cream
- Emotional hunger needs to be satisfied instantly; physical hunger can wait
- When you are eating to fill an emotional need, you are more likely to binge and eat way past being full. When you eat due to hunger, you are more likely to stop when satisfied
- Emotional eating can leave a person feeling guilty, physical hunger does not
- Emotional eater focused on a particular food, or food group
- Person eats to obtain, or maintain a certain feeling
- Consumed to maintain good moods, “sugar fix”
- Ice cream is the top comfort food
- Women’s comfort foods are:
- Chocolate
- Cookies
- Men’s comfort foods are:
- Pizza
- Steak
- Casserole
- Happy people tend to reach for pizza, or steak
- Sad people reach for ice cream, or cookies
- Bored people reach for chips
- Discover what triggers this behavior in you, are you lonely, stressed, depressed, anxious?
- Reach out to people instead of food
- Make a list of activities to do when you want to eat when not hungry, go for a walk, go exercise, do something fun
- Find a “healthy” comfort food
- Moderation instead of elimination can help, stick to portion sizes
- Try to take only 3 or 4 bites instead of finishing the whole thing
Emotional eating affects many people because of boredom, sadness, or stress. I have been there myself at one time and I know you can deal and heal from this destructive behavior.
fantasha