Emotional Eating: Signs, Causes and Solutions


You don’t always eat because you feel hungry. Shocking right?

It gets worse. Many of us find ourselves going through the fridge whenever we feel upset and other strong emotions.

Finding comfort in food is what we call emotional eating.

More often than not, you will find yourself going for comfort foods like chocolate, fries, cookies, and pizza if you are feeling emotional hunger.

Your questions are, no doubt, numerous. Is it a disease? What causes it? Can it be cured? How do I know that it’s emotional hunger?

We have compiled answers to all these and more in the sections below.

Signs That You Engage in Emotional Eating

Emotional hunger hits in an instant

Unlike the more gradual physical hunger, it is an urgent and overwhelming thing.

It isn’t filling or satisfying

You eat more and more until you feel stuffed.

Emotional eating is specific to particular junk food

You will not find yourself craving healthy food like
vegetables, but sugary things and snacks will be what catches your fancy.

Unlike physical hunger that you will feel gnawing at your stomach; emotional hunger is all in your head, forcing you to focus on specific smells and tastes.

Emotional eating is often mindless. You don’t give any attention to what you are eating, and there is no enjoyment in it. Before you realize it, you may have cleaned out your pack of cookies without really tasting it.

What Causes Emotional Hunger?

Emotional void and boredom

When you feel empty and unfulfilled, or you have nothing to do, you may resort to food as a way to occupy your mouth and fill that void. It is distracting and so repetitive that time will seem to move faster than usual. The food helps fill the void or emptiness while serving as a distraction from having to confront your real problems.

Unwanted emotions

Emotional eating will help you silence all the emotions boiling underneath, including anger, shame, resentment, sadness, fear, and more. It numbs you to negative emotions you’d rather avoid.

Stress

One of the most common causes of emotional eating is stress. It must boggle your mind how something like stress can make you hungry. When your stress is chronic, your body will start producing Cortisol (a stress hormone) in large quantities. The hormone triggers a craving for sweet, salty, and fried foods. The more stress you are under, the more you are likely to resort to emotional eating.

Social influences

When you are with friends and strangers, it becomes easy to overindulge in this tasty snack or that sweet ice-cream.

If you are nervous in large social circles, you may find yourself a bite to distract you from your nervousness.

Habits

If you grew up with sweet foods and junk foods as your reward for good behavior, those habits often carry over to adulthood. Your emotional eating habit can be nostalgia for those cherished memories of your childhood.

How Do You Stop Emotional Eating as A Habit

You may often find yourself eating until you feel stuffed, but no amount of stuffing yourself will ever sate your emotional hunger.

Below are some steps to take that will help you stop emotional eating.

Try Meditation

While it sounds crackpot at first glance, mindfulness meditation is supported by numerous studies as a treatment for emotional eating.

A high selling point is that there are thousands of tutorials on the web to guide you in the proper steps.

Move

It is as simple as it sounds. Regular exercise, like walking or jogging, will help you find relief from emotional turmoil and stress.

Studies have shown that routines like some minutes of yoga help diffuse tension and depression.

Take A healthy diet

Ensuring your body has enough fuel to last the day is a critical step in ridding yourself of emotional hunger.

If you take your food at the right times throughout the day, it will be easier to spot emotional eating habits and curb it. You can’t go wrong with healthy eating.

The food diary is your friend

A food diary will help you monitor what you eat and identify your emotional eating triggers.

Try to note down everything you eat every day and note which ones are junk foods and when you eat them.

Use a plate

Whenever you feel like snacking on something, measure it out into a dish. This will keep you mindful of your eating volume.

Remove the common offenders from your fridge

It won’t be effortless and may seem extreme, but getting rid of your go-to emotional eating snacks will help you find other coping methods.

High-five to positive self-talk

After an episode, work on self-talk and reward yourself with self-care methods after making strides.

Get Support

Try to reach out to a friend or family when you feel isolated or anxious. There are also various formal support groups like “Overeaters Anonymous” and social sites like “Meetup” that could help.

With a wide variety of other healthier options, resorting to emotional eating is a self-defeating habit that rarely helps with emotional turmoil.

Other stress coping mechanisms

There are so many different ways to cope with everyday stress that I could write a book about it. Finding a healthy way to deal with your negative emotions is the second most crucial step in overcoming this bad habit.

A couple of ways include reading an engaging book, writing a journal, visiting a garden, and many more.

All these methods allow you to either distract yourself, express your feelings, and decompress in a stress-free environment.

It would be best if you experimented with all these methods to find the one that works best for you.

Did you find this interesting? Visit the blog below for tips like this.

https://thespicyliving.com/emotional-eating-signs-causes-and-solutions/

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On point, anytime I'm worried or thinking about situations am in. To avoid thinking, I do resort to eating and eating without getting filled. I will just want to keep eating to drowned my sorrow.

thunderbj:
On point, anytime I'm worried or thinking about situations am in. To avoid thinking, I do resort to eating and eating without getting filled. I will just want to keep eating to drowned my sorrow.

Ehya. Sorry about that. Our tips should help, right?