Sometimes even the hardest-hitting food hunger pangs strike when you’re feeling that you’re most vulnerable emotionally. When confronted with a challenging problem, anxious, or distracted, you could switch to snacks for comfort either intentionally or unintentionally.
Emotional eating can derail your weight loss goals. It typically leads to overeating, particularly of high-calorie, sweet, and calorically dense foods. The excellent news is that you can take measures to take back control of your food patterns and also get back on schedule with your weight-loss aspirations if you are susceptible to emotional eating.
What is Emotional Eating?
We do not constantly eat to fulfill our physical hunger. Numerous of us shift to snacks for solace, reduced stress, or self-reward. We are prone to reaching for unhealthy food, desserts, as well as other consoling but junk foods when this occurs. When you’re feeling depressed, you could perhaps reach for an ounce of ice cream, buy a pizza if you’re bored or isolated, or stop by the drive-through after a long day at the office.
Emotional eating is when you eat to enhance your feelings-to and replace emotions rather than physical ones. Sadly, emotional eating does not resolve difficult emotions. In reality, it normally worsens your mood. Not only does your initial emotional issue persist, but also you feel regret for binge eating as a result.
Emotional Eating: Causes
You could be able to alleviate strain or comfort eating by determining why you require delicious meals. Does it make you feel better, better, better, or some combined effect of the above? Realizing these thought patterns can assist you in safely giving in. It’s also important to understand that emotional eating does not at all address the issue that caused you to be upset.
The Most Common Reasons That Can Trap You Into Emotional Eating
Nearly anything can make you want to eat. External factors of emotional eating may also include:
- Work Stress
- Financial Worries
- Fatigue
- Health Issues
- Relationship Struggles
Individuals who adhere to extreme diets or have a calorie restriction history are much more likely to consume emotionally.
The Steps You Can Take to Combat Emotional Eating
You can consider taking steps to regulate snacking when negative thoughts intimidate to trigger emotional eating. Try these recommendations to assist you to prevent emotional eating:
Maintain a Food Journal
Keep track of what you eat, how much quantity eat, when you eat, how you feel while eating, and also how hungry you are. You may notice habits that expose the relationship between emotions and meals.
Lower Your Stress Levels
If stress is a factor in your emotional eating, seek a stress-reduction technique like yoga, meditation, or breathing exercises.
Take a Hunger Reality Check
Is your appetite physical or psychological? You’re likely not hungry if you ate just a few hours earlier and don’t feel a growling tummy. Allow this no-nonsense urge for eating to pass.
Combat Boredom
Draw attention away and try substituting a healthier behavior rather than eating junk food when you aren’t hungry. Take a brisk walk, see a movie, play with your cat, listen to music, recite, go online, or make a phone call.
If Nothing Works, Seek Help from Professionals
If you don’t have a strong support system, you’re more likely to fall victim to emotional eating. Consider relying on friends and family members or connecting a counseling service that can help.
Stopping stress eating could necessitate a variety of initiatives. However, becoming conscious of the problem is a worthwhile first step toward halting this unhealthy habit.
