When emotional eating becomes a habit that causes you to experience persistent, repetitive distress, it is necessary to go deeply into those feelings and develop balanced coping mechanisms.
I would wager that nearly everyone has experienced emotional eating at some point in their lives. That is natural; we are all human!
Emotional eating can result in a significant lot of increased stress, anxiety, and guilt when it becomes a habit that is not addressed. It can eventually evolve to an unhealthy connection with food and may cause other mental and physical health issues.
So let’s examine just what emotional eating is, how to detect if you’re engaging in it, and some alternative strategies to deal with your emotions.
WHAT IS EMOTIONAL EATING?
Emotional eating is when you choose what, when, and how much to eat based on how you feel, which could be anything from boredom to stress to grief.
Emotional eating doesn’t have to happen because of a big change in your life or bad news. It can also happen because of everyday feelings like boredom, loneliness, stress, anxiety, or even excitement.
It happens when a person can’t control what they eat when they are upset. Not only do we reach for food when we’re upset, but we also often don’t know our limits and can’t control ourselves when we’re already full.
ARE YOU EMOTIONALLY EATING?
Ask yourself the five questions below to determine if you are emotional eating:
- Do you find solace in food during emotional times?
- When you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, do you tend to eat until you’re bloated or uncomfortable?
- Do you find it difficult to differentiate between hunger and desire for food?
- Do you use food as a reward frequently?
- Do you feel powerless when it comes to food?
If you answered “yes” to three or more of these questions, you are likely engaging in emotional eating.
HOW TO NAVIGATE EMOTIONAL EATING
Emotional eating is frequently more of a habit than anything else.
Unknowingly, we begin to use food to soothe and cope with our emotions. Before we know it, we’ll be reaching for a bag of salty chips and chocolate ice cream whenever work-related stress reaches a fever pitch.
To effectively navigate emotional eating, we must form a new habit. A routine of identifying our emotions, recognizing when we reach for food for emotional reasons, and identifying alternative coping mechanisms.
One of the best ways to do this is to utilize mindful eating!
MINDFUL EATING TO SOLVE EMOTIONAL EATING
In general, mindful eating is a practice that enables you to be more deliberate with your eating while maintaining a healthy relationship with food.
When we are emotionally motivated to eat, we tend to disconnect from the ritual and experience of eating. This is when you decide to eat a few cookies to help you deal with your emotions, and before you realize it, the entire box is gone.
Hunger cues? What hunger cues exist?
Mindful eating enables you to connect with your food, appreciate it, and exercise control over your decisions.
1. Check-In With Yourself
The thought that you are hungry enters your mind. You go through the motions of obtaining the food, consume it, and then continue with your day. Right?
But how frequently do you check in with yourself between deciding you want the food and obtaining it?
Performing a simple self-check can make a world of difference with regard to emotional eating.
Initially, it can be difficult to distinguish between eating out of hunger and eating in response to your emotions. Try checking in with yourself prior to eating for the next couple of days. Consider it an experiment! Consider whether you are physically hungry. If not, how do I feel in reality?
This seemingly mundane and straightforward exercise can reveal a great deal about your emotional eating patterns and tendencies.
2. Recognize Your Hunger Signals
So what exactly are hunger cues?
Your body uses hunger cues to indicate the need for energy or food. It is a physical sensation or feeling caused by the hormone ghrelin. Ghrelin alerts the brain when it is time to increase hunger and seek food.
When emotions begin to dictate when and how we eat, it can be very easy to develop the habit of ignoring hunger cues and eating whenever we desire.
Spend some time reconnecting with your body and paying attention to your hunger signals. When do you experience the feeling of hunger? How long does it typically take before you feel hungry again after a meal?
The more you comprehend your hunger cues, the easier it will be to recognize when you are ignoring them.
3. Make Use Of Journaling
You can address your current emotions through journaling. Perhaps you’ve determined that whenever you experience work-related stress, you always reach for food.
Embrace your work stress. What is the cause? Is any of it within your influence? Are there things that are beyond your control that you must let go of?
Utilize journaling as a means to explore and overcome your emotions.
4. Redirect Your Energy
We can all agree that it is difficult to break habits.
However, replacing old habits with new ones is a tried-and-true method for behavior modification.
Occasionally, emotional eating can be predictable. Possibly, every night after a long day, you decompress and reflect on all of your current stressors, and as a result, you seek comfort in food.
You can begin to break your current emotional eating habit and replace it with a new one by redirecting your energy to something new when this urge arises.
Perhaps you pull out your journal, read a book, or brew a cup of tea. Make sure that whatever you’re doing is something you truly enjoy, and not something you’re doing because you should or must.
It is essential to remember that this is only one piece of the puzzle. Redirecting your energy alone won’t solve the problem entirely, but when combined with the other strategies we’ve discussed, your chances are quite good!
