What is emotional eating?
We don’t always eat just to satisfy physical hunger. Many of us also turn to food for comfort, stress relief, or to reward ourselves. And when we do, we tend to reach for junk food, sweets, and other comforting but unhealthy foods.
You might reach for a tub of ice cream when you’re feeling down, order a pizza if you’re bored or lonely, or get fast food after a stressful day at work.
Emotional eating is using food to make yourself feel better—to fill emotional needs, rather than your stomach. Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional problems. In fact, it usually makes you feel worse. Afterwards, not only does the original emotional issue remain, but you can also feel guilty for overeating.
What will I learn in this blog?
• How to eat only for your physical needs
• How to listen to your digestive system to tell you you’re full
• The importance of seeing good food for what is really is
• How the lifestyle will support your good eating habits
Are you an emotional eater?
According to the awesome health and lifestyle site, ww.helpguide.org, there are certain habits that may indicate you are an emotional eater.
• Do you eat more when you’re feeling stressed?
• Do you eat when you’re not hungry or when you’re full?
• Do you eat to feel better (to calm and soothe yourself when you’re sad, cross, bored, anxious, etc.)?
• Do you reward yourself with food?
• Do you regularly eat until you’ve stuffed yourself?
• Does food make you feel safe? Do you feel like food is a friend?
• Do you feel powerless or out of control around food?
If you answer ‘yes’ to any of the above, you may have an emotional dependence on food that could lead to an unhealthy lifestyle.
The Emotional Eating Cycle
Occasionally using food as a pick-me-up, a reward, or to celebrate isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But when eating is your primary emotional coping mechanism—when your first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever you’re stressed, upset, angry, lonely, exhausted, or bored—you get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.
Emotional hunger can’t be filled with food. Eating may feel good in the moment, but the feelings that triggered the eating are still there. And you often feel worse than you did before because of the unnecessary calories you’ve just consumed. You beat yourself for messing up and not having more willpower.
Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a harder and harder time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.
But no matter how powerless you feel over food and your feelings, it is possible to make a positive change.
You can learn healthier ways to deal with your emotions, avoid triggers, conquer cravings, and finally put a stop to emotional eating.
The difference between emotional hunger and physical hunger
Before you can break free from the cycle of emotional eating, you first need to learn how to distinguish between emotional and physical hunger. This can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use food to deal with your feelings.
Emotional hunger can be powerful, so it’s easy to mistake it for physical hunger. But there are clues you can look for to help you tell physical and emotional hunger apart.
Emotional hunger comes on suddenly. It hits you in an instant and feels overwhelming and urgent.
Physical hunger, on the other hand, comes on more gradually. The urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction (unless you haven’t eaten for a very long time).
Emotional hunger craves specific comfort foods. When you’re physically hungry, almost anything sounds good—including healthy stuff like vegetables. But emotional hunger craves junk food or sugary snacks that provide an instant rush. You feel like you need cheesecake or pizza, and nothing else will do.
Emotional hunger often leads to mindless eating. Before you know it, you’ve eaten a whole bag of chips or an entire tub of ice cream without really paying attention or fully enjoying it. When you’re eating in response to physical hunger, you’re typically more aware of what you’re doing.
Emotional hunger isn’t satisfied once you’re full. You keep wanting more and more, often eating until you’re uncomfortably stuffed. Physical hunger, on the other hand, doesn’t need to be stuffed. You feel satisfied when your stomach is full.
Emotional hunger isn’t located in the stomach. Rather than a growling belly or a pang in your stomach, you feel your hunger as a craving you can’t get out of your head. You’re focused on specific textures, tastes, and smells.
Emotional hunger often leads to regret, guilt, or shame. When you eat to satisfy physical hunger, you’re unlikely to feel guilty or ashamed because you’re simply giving your body what it needs. If you feel guilty after you eat, it’s likely because you know deep down that you’re not eating for nutritional reasons.
Common causes of emotional eating
Stress. Ever notice how stress makes you hungry? It’s not just in your mind. When stress is chronic, as it so often is in our chaotic, fast-paced world, your body produces high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet, and fried foods—foods that give you a burst of energy and pleasure. The more uncontrolled stress in your life, the more likely you are to turn to food for emotional relief.
Stuffing emotions. Eating can be a way to temporarily silence or “stuff down” uncomfortable emotions, including anger, fear, sadness, anxiety, loneliness, resentment, and shame. While you’re numbing yourself with food, you can avoid the difficult emotions you’d rather not feel.
Boredom or feelings of emptiness. Do you ever eat simply to give yourself something to do, to relieve boredom, or as a way to fill a void in your life? You feel unfulfilled and empty, and food is a way to occupy your mouth and your time. In the moment, it fills you up and distracts you from underlying feelings of purposelessness and dissatisfaction with your life.
Childhood habits. Think back to your childhood memories of food. Did your parents reward good behaviour with ice cream, take you out for pizza when you got a good school report, or serve you sweets when you were feeling sad? These habits can often carry over into adulthood. Or your eating may be driven by nostalgia—for cherished memories of grilling burgers in the garden with your dad or baking and eating biscuits with your mom.
Social influences. Getting together with other people for a meal is a great way to relieve stress, but it can also lead to overeating. It’s easy to overindulge simply because the food is there or because everyone else is eating. You may also overeat in social situations out of nervousness. Or perhaps your family or circle of friends encourages you to overeat, and it’s easier to go along with the group.
How does hypnosis help with emotional eating?
Being able to control emotional eating starts with having the right attitude to food and adopting a lifestyle that you can maintain long-term.
Seeing a Clinical Hypnotherapist really can help you to change your relationship with food.
• Hypnosis helps address the core reasons why you eat emotionally, so you can make the right decisions in the future
• Being more mentally calm will help you to make better eating decisions and help with determination and willpower.
• Have bags of confidence in the way that you look and your ability to achieve the goals you are looking for.
• Learn to love yourself, appreciate and nurture yourself.
• Understand that food is there purely for your physical needs, and not for your mental comfort.
We can even make a unique self hypnosis recording for you to use as food journey continues, giving you those positive messages every day until you adopt this healthy new lifestyle for good.
What did I learn here?
That emotional eating is as much to do with your mind as it is with your body!
The right diet, coupled with the right attitude will take you to where you want to be.
If you’d like to find out more about how hypnosis can help you, have a look at our website, https://thehypnosisclinic.com/services/weight/.
We offer a free initial consultation, either by a Telehealth video link or at our clinic right in the heart of London’s Regent Street.
Or, if you fancy a chat, just give us a call.