Only to relieve physical appetite, we don't always feed. For warmth, stress relief, or to reward ourselves, many of us often turn to food. And we prefer to reach out for fast food, candy, and other comforting yet unhealthy things when we do. When you feel down, you could reach for a pint of ice cream, order a pizza if you are bored or lonely, or swing by the drive-through after a stressful day at work.
Emotional eating uses food to make yourself feel better, rather than the stomach, to meet emotional needs. Mental eating, sadly, doesn't cure emotional issues. Probably, it generally makes you feel worse. Afterwards, the initial emotional dilemma not only exists, but you feel guilty for overeating as well.
The emotional eating cycle
It isn't always a bad thing to sometimes use food as a pick-me-up, a treat, or to celebrate. But when eating is your primary emotional coping strategy, you get trapped in an unhealthy loop where the real feeling or problem is never discussed, when your first instinct is to open the refrigerator anytime you are depressed, frustrated, angry, lonely, tired, or bored.
With food, emotional hunger can't be met. Eating may feel nice at the moment, but there are still the feelings that caused the eating. And due to the excessive calories you have just eaten, you sometimes feel worse than you did before. For giving up and not getting more willpower, you beat yourself.
You avoid learning healthy ways to cope with your feelings, you have a harder and harder time managing your weight, and you feel increasingly helpless over both food and your emotions, compounding the issue. Yet it is possible to make a meaningful difference no matter how helpless you feel over food and your emotions. You can learn to deal with your emotions in healthy ways, avoid causes, overcome cravings, and eventually stop emotional eating.
The difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger
You first need to learn how to differentiate between emotional and physical hunger before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating. This can be trickier than it sounds, particularly if you use food to cope with your feelings on a regular basis.
Emotional hunger can be intense, so it's easy to mistake physical hunger for that. But to help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart, there are signs you can search for.
Emotional appetite suddenly appears. In an instant, it reaches you and feels overwhelming and urgent. Physical hunger, on the other hand, happens more slowly. The desire to eat does not feel as dire or claim immediate gratification (unless for a very long time you haven't eaten).
Emotional appetite craves particular foods for warmth. Almost everything sounds amazing when you're physically hungry, even nutritious items like vegetables. Emotional hunger, however, craves junk food or sugary treats that offer an urgent rush. You sound like you need a cheesecake or pizza, and you're not going to do anything else.
Emotional hunger also results in eating mindlessly. You've eaten a whole bag of chips or a whole pint of ice cream before you know it, without even paying attention or enjoying it entirely. You're usually more conscious of what you're doing when you feed in response to physical hunger.
Emotional hunger until you're full isn't satisfied. More and more, you keep wanting, always consuming until you are uncomfortably stuffed. On the other hand, physical hunger does not require stuffing. When your stomach's full, you feel satisfied.
Emotional hunger until you're full isn't satisfied. More and more, you keep wanting, always consuming until you are uncomfortably stuffed. On the other hand, physical hunger does not require stuffing. When your stomach's full, you feel satisfied.
Emotional hunger is not in the stomach. You sense your hunger as a craving that you can't get out of your mind, instead of a growling belly or a pang in your stomach. Specific textures, tastes, and smells are what you concentrate on.
Sometimes, emotional hunger contributes to remorse, shame, or disgrace. You are unlikely to feel guilty or embarrassed when you eat to relieve physical hunger, since you are actually giving your body what it wants. It's probably because you know deep down that you're not eating for nutritional purposes, if you feel bad after you feed.
Identify your emotional eating triggers
Identifying your personal causes is the first step in putting a stop to emotional eating. What conditions, locations, or emotions make you reach for the comfort of food? Most emotional eating is connected to negative feelings, but optimistic emotions, such as thanking yourself for completing a goal or enjoying a holiday or happy event, may also cause it.
Common causes of emotional eating
Stress. Do you ever notice how stress makes you starve? This isn't just in your head. Your body generates high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, when stress is chronic, as it is so often in our stressful, fast-paced world. Cortisol induces cravings for salty, sweet, and fried foods that provide you with a burst of energy and enjoyment. For emotional relief, the more uncontrolled tension in your life, the more likely you are to resort to food.
Emotion Stuffing. Eating may be a way to silence or 'stuff down' negative feelings temporarily, like frustration, anxiety, depression, anxiety, isolation, resentment, and shame. When you're numbing yourself with food, the difficult feelings you'd rather not feel can be stopped.
Boredom or lonely thoughts. Do you ever eat either to give yourself something to do, to reduce boredom, or to fill your life with a void? You feel unfulfilled and hollow, and your mouth and your time are consumed by food. It fills you up at the moment and distracts you from your life's underlying feelings of purposelessness and disappointment.
Habits from childhood. Think back to memories of your childhood with food. Did your parents use ice cream to reward good conduct, take you out for pizza when you got a good report card, or serve you candy when you felt sad? Such trends may also carry on into adulthood. Or your eating can be inspired by nostalgia for cherished memories of grilling burgers with your father in the backyard or baking and eating cookies with your wife.
Social Influences. A perfect way to alleviate stress is to get together with other people for a meal, but it can also lead to overeating. Only because the food is there or because someone else is feeding, it's easy to overindulge. You might even overeat out of nervousness in social settings. Or maybe you're motivated to overeat by your family or circle of friends and it's easier to go along with the party.
