Dealing with…and Defeating Emotional Eating
4 practical ways to break this self-defeating habit
Question: I’m an emotional eater and stray at times. I then beat myself up...get back on track...and all the while worrying about my health. I had a heart attack in 2005 and made a lot of changes since then. Lately, however, I’m not as strict with my diet as I was right after the attack.
How can I get back to eating healthy?
Rolanda P.
Answer: Please don't think you’re alone in your situation. Emotional eating is extremely common in the society we live in. Everyone runs at such an exhausting pace that stress is rampant. I think that people turn to food for relief from that stress—although that solution often brings as much pain as pleasure.
But you’re on the right track. Understanding that you tend to eat when under stress is the first step in combating the problem.
Emotional eating can best be described as "eating in response to feelings rather than in response to hunger." And I think there are many reasons we crave food when emotions are running high.
Scientifically and biologically, food brings a change in the hormonal levels in the body. These changes bring about some relief from what you’re feeling. Chocolate, for example, can actually improve feelings of sadness or depression because of the endorphins stimulated by the chocolate. So it's understandable why we use (and abuse) food to combat emotional stress.
So how to avoid overeating when you are feeling emotional? The first thing is to determine what causes the binges. I believe the most common triggers are stress, anxiety, fear, anger, fatigue, insecurity and boredom. Once you recognize the situations that make you feel like overeating then it should be easier to deal with it.
Here are some suggestions for ways to beat emotional eating:
1. Get moving!
In my experience, the best remedy for emotional eating is physical activity. Get off the couch and go for a walk, take a bike ride, or head outside to garden. Not only will the activity distract you, but instead of adding calories, you’ll be burning them off!
2. Identify your “comfort foods.”
I would also suggest identifying your "comfort foods" (your Achilles heel) and then refusing to have them in the house! Hopefully the harder it is to get your hands on them, the less likely you will be to consume them.
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Comments
hi, Julie thanks for the
hi, Julie thanks for the tips you provided for us in here. You are right that get moving is the best remedy for emotional eating. It is so reasonable for me, since, when we are do physical activities, we force our brain to change the desire to eat with the activity we are do. One more lessons I get from your article in here. Thanks in advance. Suresh
Julie, great idea to jot
Julie, great idea to jot down your mood next to the food in your journal! I always keep track on what I eat so I can add up my calories, fat, etc. but the pattern that emerges is I'll do fine for breakfast and lunch, and then between lunch and dinner I get waaaaay off track. I will start with a healthy snack (usually salad) and then lose control and go crazy (chips, cheese and crackers, stuff like that). I am going to try pinpointing the moods that make me switch from healthy to unhealthy. Thanks!
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