EMOTIONAL EATING – Easy tips on how to identify if you are an emotional eater and how to change those habits to increase your health
Stop and recognize emotional and stress eating with these simple tips.
Are you EMOTIONALLY eating? Turning to food to help cope with unpleasant emotions such as loneliness or sadness or relieving stress and boredom is often why your diets may fail. After the emotional eating is over, those feelings are still there, with another added bonus – guilt! For overeating. ☹
Food should be a pleasure for you to eat, but it should also nourish your body with the correct amount of nutrition that you need.
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Feeling like you have no power over yourself when it comes to food and cravings is an issue that can be tackled with mindful eating. You have the power to change your emotional habits that sabotages your diets and you can regain your control over your food and feelings.
Below are some possible reasons why you may be emotionally eating, and how you can go about preventing it 😊
So, what exactly is “Emotional Eating”?
Stress or emotional eating is when food is used to make you feel better, so instead of eating while being hungry, you are eating to satisfy an emotional need, such as eating ice-cream when you are upset or feeling low, getting fast food after being stressed at work, or getting take out when you are feeling lonely.
Food is also used as a reward for doing well on something, to celebrate an event or as a something to pick you up energy wise. This is ok when it is a rare thing, but when it becomes a coping mechanism – turning to food as soon as you feel upset, lonely, bored, stressed or tired – it becomes a very bad habit and very unhealthy habit – as those emotions are not dealt with. And more negative emotions are then added to that, because you feel bad for eating too much.
But don’t worry! You are capable of great change! You can learn to eat mindfully, deal with your emotions and control your weight, while being able to stop the emotional eating cycle.
How do you know if you are an emotional eater?
You are an emotional eater when you:
- Reward yourself with food
- Feel safe around food
- Eat when you are not hungry
- Eat when you are full
- Eat to make yourself feel better because you are sad, angry, bored or worried about something
- Eat more when you are feeling stressed.
- Feel like you are out of control when you are around food.
Emotional hunger and Physical hunger are different.
Emotional hunger is a craving that you cannot get out of your head, as it focusses on specific smells, textures and tastes. Physical hunger is a pain in your stomach.
Emotional hunger usually leads to mindlessly eating, when you have gone through an entire container of ice-cream or bag of chips while not paying any attention or enjoying it. Physical hunger is when you are more aware of what and how much you are eating.
Emotional hunger never really satisfies you when you are full, as you want more and continue to eat until you are uncomfortably full. Physical hunger doesn’t need to be uncomfortably full, instead you feel satisfied when your stomach is full.
Emotional hunger come on in an instant, urgently and feels overwhelming like you need it now. Physical hunger comes on gradually and the urge to eat does not require an instant satisfaction.
Emotional hunger usually leads to feelings of guilt, shame or regret as you know deep down you are overeating the wrong foods and are not satisfying your nutritional needs. Physical eating does not cause these feelings as you are just giving your body what it needs at the time.
What drives you to emotionally eat?
Usually, emotional eating is linked to negative feelings, but can also be linked to positive rewarding ones. They can happen in certain places or situations.
Stress – This emotion can make you hungry, for real, not just mentally, as having continued chronic stress actually alters the hormones in your body to produce cortisol, a stress hormone increasing your appetite for high energy and pleasure foods such as salty, fried or sweet foods.
Habits in Childhood – Memories of long ago with your parents and siblings can have a tremendous impact on your food behaviour today. The rewarding of good behaviour or finished jobs with food, or offering sweet treats if you were sick or sad about something, or even family memories together having takeout, often carry on into adulthood.
Being Social – Friends and family get togethers for meals can lead to overeating, as everyone else is eating, there is lot of food there, you may be nervous so overeat, or there may be encouragement from your group to eat more.
Feeling Bored or Empty – Wanting to fill an empty void in your life, or just being bored can make you eat. That feeling of being unfulfilled and empty can cause you to use food to “fill up” so that you get the physical feeling of what you are actually craving for mentally.
Stuffing your Emotions – Food and overeating can be used to numb yourself of your emotions – anger, loneliness, shame, resentment, sadness, fear and anxiety – stuffing yourself with food helps to crowd these emotions out as you would rather feel “stuffed” than dealing with them.
So how do you change this habit and fill that void you are feeling? And tackle those emotions?
You must swap out the food habits with non-food habits to fulfil yourself emotionally. A diet only works when you have control over your eating habits – when your emotions are in control, then a diet wont work. Understanding what triggers, you emotionally and understanding the cycle your emotional eating is a big step to helping yourself. Having an ALTERNATIVE will enable your success in that area!
How to swap out the Emotional Eating with Alternatives
Boredom – Explore nature or outside, read a book, watch a movie (something funny), Find something physical you enjoy (or have enjoyed in the past) doing, such as playing a musical instrument, scrapbooking, drawing/painting art, woodworking, gardening, playing sports.
Tired and Exhausted – Take a relaxing bath, light some essential oil candles, wrap yourself in a soft warm blanket, make yourself a nice hot cup of herbal tea (like chamomile)
Lonely or Depressed – Call a friend who makes you feel better, go through your old photos of fun moments, play with one of your pets, go through some of your old things that you love and remember the good things.
Being Anxious or Stressed – Exercise, go walking or running while listening to your favourite music, dance to your favourite music, squeeze the crap out of a stress ball, do yoga, clean your house, meditate
Acceptance of all your feelings (even the bad ones) is another important step
It might seem you are powerless over food, but your emotional eating is due to you actually feeling powerless over your own emotions. You feel as though you cannot deal with them so, instead, you avoid them by using food.
Allow yourself to feel uncomfortable with your emotions – when you don’t suppress or obsess over your emotions, they tent to subside rather quickly, they lose their control over you and your attention, even the very powerful emotions and feelings.
Staying mindful and connected to the here and now helps to repair your emotional problems and will then in turn, reduce and vanquish your trigger for your emotional eating. 🙌
How are you going to tackle emotional eating this week? Comment below! 👇👇👇
Have a health problem? Want to lose weight?
Stasia is a Natural Health Master Mind Body and Anxiety Expert and has qualifications in Master and Trainer level Hypnotherapy, Master and Trainer level NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming), Master and Trainer level Time Line Therapy and Master and Trainer level NLP Coaching, as well as being a science-based degree qualified Naturopath, and Metabolic Balance Nutritional Practitioner she has many other natural health qualifications in energetic medicine and others.. She specialises in Trauma and Anxiety – Stasia helps anxiety naturally disappear & bring calmness, clarity & confidence in less than 2 weeks – Book in for a free Strategy Call to see if you and Stasia are a good fit.
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