Emotional eating

Emotional eating is turning to food to suppress a negative emotion, such as being stressed, bored, lonely, or scared. Emotional eating can be a conscious or unconscious act of overeating in order to distract oneself from his/her feelings. It is very common for people to turn to food as a way to deal with their issues.

Emotional eating can be a cycle that can get out of control if prolonged. First, the negative emotion leads to food for comfort, which offers temporary relief. This can quickly turn into guilt for overeating, which may lead to further stress and the cycle re-starts and continues.

Deciphering between emotional hunger and physical hunger can be a step to prevent overeating long term. Emotional hunger is when you overeat without noticing in order to fill an emotion that is upsetting you. Physical hunger develops overtime and comes with symptoms of your stomach growling and increased moodiness and feeling full/ satisfied when you are done eating.

If you experience emotional eating, you are not alone! The first step to control this problem is increasing your awareness so you can make better choices. Sometimes emotional eating will happen, so don’t shame yourself. The more conscious of your choices and feelings, the better you can be at trying to prevent emotional eating. A good way to determine physical hunger is a food/mood hunger scale. Before eating, rate your hunger and mood and use this to be aware of why you are eating. Track it daily to be more mindful and re-learn your hunger cues. Try to find other activities when you get stressed, such as going for a walk, or calling a friend, reading a book or deep breathing.