Emotional Eating affect quite a lot of people and can prevent them from trying to lose weight. When you eat emotionally, you are using food to cope with your emotions rather than to satisfy physical hunger. Remember the time you were stressed about your work and eat an entire chocolate, ice-cream or pizza and still felt unsatisfied? That was an occasions when you gave in to your emotions and indulged in food as a form of escape instead of dealing with your emotions. But you are not alone, almost 75% of people have emotional eating problem.
Scientific studies show that whenever we are under extreme emotions, whether it is pleasure or pain, we tend to crave for comfort foods which might not be a healthy choice. Emotional eating can lead to a person becoming overweight as such people have no control over their eating.
How to recognize emotional eating?
Identify if you are an emotional eater. If you do any of the following, chances are there are times you are eating from certain emotions.
- eat without realizing that you’re doing it
- feel guilt or shame after eating
- eat after something unpleasant, even if you’re not hungry
- crave certain foods when you are upset
- eat until your are uncomfortably full
- eat when you’re not hungry
- eat rapidly
Stop Emotional Eating
Know Your Emotional State. You need to start becoming more aware of your emotions throughout the day. It’s not a good idea to let stress, worry, disappointment or any other negative emotion build up. Otherwise that emotion will take over you and you will engage in emotional eating. Becoming aware will help you stop before you reach for food to deal with negative emotions.
Identify your Trigger Emotions. You need to identify your emotional eating triggers. To find your emotional eating triggers think of the last time you engaged in emotional eating. Were there any stressful events that occurred? Any tough emotions or circumstances you experienced? Become aware of your emotional eating triggers, so that next time they come up, you wont automatically engage in emotional eating.
Diet Diary. You can write down in the diet diary your thoughts, emotions, worries and anxieties. This will help you point out the reoccurring events in your life that cause you repeated stress. Lets say you find out that some your friend is a big source of stress. You need to ask “what can I do about it?” You might talk to your friend about making some changes in your relation and that way eliminate emotional trigger.
Find Alternative Relaxing Activities. Often we engage in emotional eating to relax and comfort ourselves. To stop emotional eating you need to make a list of other relaxing activities you can do. It could be a long walk, bike ride, a warm shower, a nap, listening to your favorite music, or watching your favorite movie. Make a list of your relaxing activities and keep it in a visible spot, preferably on your fridge. This way when you are about to reach for comfort foods, you are reminded to do some other relaxing activity than eating snacks.
Accept Setbacks. You might not be successful every time, but if you accept your mistakes and move forward, continuing to work on knowing your emotional state , identifying emotional triggers and writing it down in your diet diary, you’ll overcome your emotional eating problems once and for all.
