.png)
Emotional eating is a time-honored tradition among humans. It’s the consumption of food in response to emotions. While most people think of emotional eating as an unhealthy habit, some women use it as a weight management strategy. The truth is, emotional eating can be problematic if it becomes your primary tool for managing stress or difficult emotions.
What causes emotional eating?
The root cause of emotional eating can be different. It can be anything from work stress to financial worries, health issues to relationship struggles. And most often it is more common with women than with men. When we feel overcome with negative emotions, food may seem like a way to fill an emotional void and create a false feeling of “fullness” or temporary wholeness.
How to stop emotional eating?
Consider how you eat
Emotional eating tries to reduce stress, boredom or reward, rather than satisfy hunger. It is linked to emotional hunger. This can lead to feeling guilt which further fuels a negative cycle.
Physiological hunger is not influenced by emotion and manifests with gradual physical sensations. It results in the consumption of food until the body has received the nutrition it requires.
Mindful eating is the act of eating while paying attention to your emotions and your food intake.
Focus on your feelings
Take time each day to reflect on how you feel and whether it is leading you to crave food in an unhelpful way.
Look for any patterns
Notice what triggers you to eat. If you stop and think about the event, it will get easier to stop eating.
Eat deliberately
To give yourself a better chance of sticking to a healthy diet, make a conscious decision to eat well - what you will eat and when. Avoid triggers by analyzing the thinking and emotions connected to food.
Keep connected
It's important to be connected to a social network in order to lower stress levels and prevent emotional eating.
Start fresh
When you slip into emotional eating, don't let it get to you. Just restart the diet and try to do better in the future.
Talk to a therapist
If you want to understand why you feel like you do, schedule a call with me. I will take some time to explore your concerns and answer your questions. And if necessary, we'll decide on a therapy approach that works for you.