People often eat when they experience different emotions. They eat when experiencing different emotions such as stress, boredom, anger, anxiety, frustration, sadness and loneliness. This is known as "emotional eating." Emotional eating occurs when someone eats in response to emotions or feelings rather than in response to the body's need for food or hunger.
Unfortunately the foods that get consumed when someone is emotionally eating are frequently high calorie, high fat junk foods or comfort foods. Emotional eating can make it difficult for people to maintain their weight or lose weight. Recognizing that one is an emotional eater is the first step in helping to manage emotional eating.
Understanding Emotional Eating
Understanding what emotional eating is can help the emotional eater begin to manage his or her emotional eating. People reach for foods during stressful times or in response to other emotions like anger, frustration or sadness to help them manage these emotions with food.
Many of the foods eaten are "comfort foods": those that the person ate as a child which may bring back happy childhood memories. Macaroni and cheese, fresh bread or homemade cookies are good examples of this type of comfort food. Other comfort foods like the sweets ice cream, cakes, pies have high sugar content which makes people feel better for a while. Many people reach for high fat foods like chips, french fries, fried chicken, pizza and cookies to provide comfort. All of these foods are high in calories and often not nutritious.
Some people reach for other types of comfort foods like chocolate and caffeinated drinks; these foods and beverages have components in them that give a person more energy and make someone feel more alert and able to function. Many of these foods are also high in empty calories which can contribute to weight gain.
Eating as a Distraction
Eating food can also be used as a way to take one's mind off of a stressful day or upcoming events. Food can serve as a pleasurable distraction for a time. Think of the harried worker coming home and eating a cake after a stressful day at the office or the classic, downing a pint of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream after breaking up with a boyfriend.
The distraction effects of eating food are short-term. While eating, the food chemicals and body hormones released as part of the eating and digesting processes can make a person feel better, calmer or more energized. Once the effects of the food wear off the impact on body weight gain can persist for quite some time.
Keeping a Food Journal
Keeping track of what one eats in a food journal is a very effective way to track eating habits, patterns and emotional triggers.The emotional eater can track what he or she is eating (portions and calories) along with the moods that he or she was in at the time that the food or beverage was consumed or the reasons that the person ate e.g. hunger, boredom, stress, anger etc.
Keeping a journal can be very help in identifying triggers that may cause the emotional eater to eat. Once the emotional eater has identified their eating triggers then he or she can come up with strategies to help in avoiding emotional eating.
Using Strategies to Avoid Emotional Eating
Identifying what foods a person is likely to eat when feeling a particular emotion can also help in managing emotional eating. If a person reaches for the ice cream any time she is sad, then making sure ice cream is not in the house (or there is a healthier alternative)and the person finds other ways of managing the sadness or stress can reduce and eliminate the emotional eating. If another person reaches for the bag of chips when stressed, then making sure the chips are not in the house (or there is a healthier alternative) can help in managing the emotional eating.
Having a collection of strategies that can be used in place of emotional eating will help the emotional eater to regain control over how and when he or she eats. The article on Tips to Manage Emotional Eating: How to Stop Eating Due to Boredom, Stress, Frustration or Anxiety offers many helpful suggestions and tips for managing emotional eating.
Eating is healthful foods is only one of the techniques that will help keep you healthy. Read more tips to help you live a healthy life at How to Be Healthy for Life.
Resources
Mayo Clinic Staff. 2007. Weight-loss help: how to stop emotional eating.
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