At one time or another, all of us have let our emotions get the best of us. After all, we’re human. And for many of us, those emotions can frequently affect our eating habits, from what we eat to how much we eat, even how often we eat. And if you’re struggling to lose weight, emotional eating can “tip the scales” in the opposite direction we want.
So what is emotional eating? And how do you recognize emotional eating? Most importantly, what can be done to stop it, once and for all?
Emotional Eating means You’re Feeding Your Feelings
When you are happy, your food of choice could be steak or pizza, when you are sad it could be ice cream or cookies, and when you are bored it could be potato chips. Food does more than fill our stomachs – it also satisfies feelings, and when you quench those feelings with comfort food and your stomach isn’t growling, that’s emotional eating.
How often during a normal day do you feed a feeling rather than feed your hunger?
Emotional eating is eating for reasons other than hunger. Instead of the physical symptom of hunger initiating the eating, an emotion triggers the eating.
What are the telltale signs of emotional eating, what foods are the most likely culprits when it comes to emotional eating, and how it can be overcome?
There are several differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger:
- Emotional hunger comes on suddenly; physical hunger occurs gradually.
- When you are eating to fill a void that isn’t related to an empty stomach, you crave a specific food, such as pizza or ice cream, and only that food will meet your need. When you eat because you are actually hungry, you are open to options.
- Emotional hunger feels like it needs to be satisfied instantly with the food you crave; physical hunger can wait.
- Even when you are full, if you are eating to satisfy an emotional need, you are more likely to keep eating. When you are eating because you are hungry, you are more likely to stop when you are full.
- Emotional eating can leave behind feelings of guilt; eating when you are physically hungry does not.
Know Your Comfort Foods
When emotional hunger rumbles, one of its distinguishing characteristics is that you are focused on a particular food, which is likely a comfort food.
Comfort foods are foods a person eats to obtain or maintain a feeling. Comfort foods are often wrongly associated with negative moods, and indeed, people often consume them when they are down or depressed, but interestingly enough, comfort foods are also consumed to maintain good moods.
Ice Cream is first on the comfort food list. After ice cream, comfort foods break down by sex: For women it’s chocolate and cookies; for men it’s pizza, steak, and casserole.
What you reach for when eating to satisfy an emotion depends on the emotion. The types of comfort foods a person is drawn toward varies depending on their mood. People in happy moods tended to prefer foods such as pizza or steak 32% of the time. Sad people reached for ice cream and cookies 39% of the time, and 36% of bored people opened up a bag of potato chips.
We Can Overfeed Emotions
When eating becomes the only or main strategy a person uses to manage emotions then problems arise – especially if the foods a person is choosing to eat to satisfy emotions are not exactly healthy.
If you eat when you are not hungry, chances are your body does not need the calories. If this happens too often, the extra calories get stored as fat, and too much fat storage can cause one to be overweight, which will present health risks.
75% of overeating is caused by emotions, so dealing with emotions appropriately is important.
Recognizing Emotional Eating
The first thing one needs to do to overcome emotional eating is to recognize it. Keeping a food diary and documenting everything that you eat and giving it a score from 1 – 4. One means not hungry at all, 2 is somewhat hungry, 3 is hungry and 4 is extremely hungry. This will give you an awareness of each time you put something in your mouth for reasons other than hunger.
Next, you need to learn techniques that help manage emotions besides eating. We believe this is the absolute key to beating emotional eating and is one of our main motivators for creating the Life Success program. If you’d like help with eating due to an emotional reaction, we’re hear to help.
Managing Emotional Eating
Here are a few tips to help you deal with emotional eating:
Recognize emotional eating and learn what triggers this behavior in you.
Make a list of things to do when you get the urge to eat and you are not hungry, and carry it with you. When you feel overwhelmed, you can put off that desire by doing another enjoyable activity.
When you get the urge to eat when you are not hungry, find a comfort food that’s healthy instead of junk food. Comfort foods do not need to be unhealthy.
For some, leaving comfort foods behind when they are dieting can be emotionally difficult. The key is moderation, not elimination. Divide comfort foods into small portions so that the temptation to eat more than one serving can be avoided.
When it comes to comfort foods that are not always healthy, remember that your memory of a food peaks after about 3 bites, so if you only have those 3 bites, you will recall it as a good experience than if you polished off the whole thing. So have a few bites, then call it quits, and you’ll get equal pleasure.
Lastly, remember that emotional eating is something that most people do when they are bored, happy, or sad. It might be a bag of chips or a steak, but whatever the food choice, learning how to control it and using moderation are key.
Are You An Emotional Eater? Find out now
by taking the Emotional Eating Self–Test
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**Sections reprinted with permission from Jeffery R. Wilbert, PhD & Associates author of the book Fattitudes: Beat Self-Defeat and Win Your War with Weight