ALL ABOUT EMOTIONAL EATING !!

Many a times we don’t Eat just to satisfy physical hunger, we tend to turn to food for comfort, stress relief or reward ourselves with food. When we do so, we tend to reach out for junk foods like pizza, burgers or sweets like ice-creams, chocolates as these foods provides us comfort and satisfies our emotions caused due to stress. This is termed as emotional eating which is a pattern of eating where people use food to help them deal with stress.

We all tend experience emotional eating at one time or the another, it could be seen when you see yourself or others eating a bag of chips when they are bored or watching some show as it feels great to have something crispy to munch on or eating a bar of chocolate to relieve stress after a difficult day at work as it helps instantly uplift energy and mood. However, if these episodes of emotional eating happen frequently or a person adapts this as the main way a person to deal with their emotions then their health, happiness and weight can be negatively affected.

THE EMOTIONAL EATING CYCLE:

Emotional eating cannot be fixed with food. Eating may make you feel good for a while but the feelings that triggered eating is still there and the guilt of overeating just adds up making you feel more worse. Additionally to the problem, you stop practising healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a hard time controlling your weight and you increasingly feel powerless over both food and feelings. However powerless you feel over food and  your feelings you can make a positive change and make healthier ways to deal with your emotions.

Causes of Emotional Eating:

1. Stress: In our fast paced lives we often face a lot of stress which makes our body produce high levels of stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet and fried foods that helps you provide energy, reduce stress and provide pleasure. However uncontrolled stress leads you to turn over food for emotional relief.
2. Emotions: Eating helps temporarily to silence or stuff down uncomfortable emotions, including anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment and shame. These emotions are often numbed with food and avoid you from thinking about your emotions. 
3. Boredom: Often when we are bored or don’t have anything to do we tend to turn towards food to relieve boredom, by distracting from the underlying cause of purposelessness and dissatisfaction with life.
4. Social influence: Often having social gatherings for a meal helps relieve stress, however one tends to overeat as everyone else is eating also since we spend more time than usual on the table eating more is quite common. In many cases the person overeats due to nervousness. We also have our family and friends who encourage us to eat more and it is easier to go along with a group on food.

Ways to combat Emotional eating:

1. Keep a diary to recognise your emotional eating pattern. Note about when did you have an emotional eating episode and after what incidence did it happen.This will help you analyse the situation that cause you to emotional eat and help you overcome these feelings gradually.
2. If you feel depressed call someone who always cheers you up and makes you feel better, spend some time with the person you enjoy spending time with, look at some old cherished memories or photographs.
3. When you feel anxious divert your energy by dancing to your favourite song, sing some music that calms you down, squeeze a stress ball or go for a walk.
4. If you are exhausted have a cup of warm green tea, take a shower, listen to some light music, put some scented candles or wrap your self in a warm blanket and relax.
5. If you are bored read a book, watch some comedy shows or movies, munch on some healthy crunchy snacks to provide you comfort, do some activity you love (playing a guitar, drawing, painting, singing, tennis, etc)
6. When you crave for something don’t give in without thinking, wait for a while and think if you are really craving it, because at that we just tend to eat. But our mind has more power over craving than we think. So next time try avoiding the urge of a craving and see if we are really craving food or is it our emotions.
7. If you feel like indulging once in a while it is completely fine, however do it in a controlled manner and avoid attaching it to an emotion.

Giveaway Message:

Eating does not just satisfy our physical hunger but many of us eat to satisfy us emotionally, this tends to lead to overeating. In the long term this is very harmful for our health, happiness, weight and emotions. It is very important to control our emotions which is difficult however having a positive approach towards it can help us a long way. 

Lastly I would like to say:

“Food can distract you away from your pain, but food cannot take your pain. Infact overeating cause you more pain and guilt”

Treat food as fuel to nourish your body not feed your emotions!!!