Many suffer from what is known as emotional eating. In this condition, food is eaten for pleasure rather than for sustenance, as intended. It is used as a coping mechanism to alleviate feelings of distress, such as sadness, pain, depression, anger, boredom, and other related emotions.
Eating emotionally is very different from eating to satisfy actual hunger, and can be to blame for weight gain, obesity, and emotional and psychological distress due to the guilt and shame it can induce in those who practice it.
Typically, the emotional eater will choose unhealthy foods such as ice cream, cookies, and other sweets because it is the fat and sugar in them that provide a sense of satisfaction and euphoria by inducing reward centers in the brain to release chemicals to “feel good”. , such as the body’s natural pain relievers, opioids.
Emotional eating can be severe or an occasional occurrence, but, for most, it becomes a habit, and something that they are unfortunately not even aware of exists in their own lives. Old habits are hard to die, as the saying goes, and those who don’t realize it automatically reach for fries and ice cream when they are distressed or bored.
To break free from the cycle of emotional eating, it is essential to understand how it differs from actual physical hunger. This can be more complicated than it sounds, because emotional eaters have spent months or years perfecting the craft of using food to deal with feelings and are often completely out of touch with their real need for food. body or what it feels like.
Since emotional hunger is a powerful thing, it’s important to assess the signs and take a deep look at your own behavior in case you want to stop the cycle of emotional eating and overeating.
Emotional hunger versus physical hunger
Emotional hunger is sudden
Emotional hunger appears suddenly, like an unexpected storm on a hot summer day. It’s usually an urgent need for food and it feels overwhelming. On the contrary, physical hunger is not so urgent, it is more gradual and also expected, since it occurs in anticipated intervals, such as meal times.
Cravings
Unlike physical hunger in which a delicate meal will satisfy, including healthy selections like fruits and vegetables, in emotional hunger one has uncontrollable cravings for foods high in fat and sugar.
The craving is an urgent need, and sometimes it feels like something you can’t live without, and only that specific food you’re craving will satisfy.
Guilt and shame
Nobody feels guilty about having lunch or breakfast, it is sustenance, it is what humans are supposed to do. But, emotional hunger is usually marked by feelings of guilt, shame and regret after binge eating because deep down the diner knows that this food was ingested for dysfunctional reasons.
Mindless eating
Unlike physical hunger, in which you sit down to enjoy a meal and savor every bite, emotional hunger is often characterized by mindless eating. Without realizing it, one can finish a tub of ice cream or a box of cookies without really realizing how much they have eaten.
Unlike physical hunger, where one stops eating once full, emotional hunger is never satisfied. The emotional eater will continue to eat and want more and more food until they are so full that they feel sick.
Emotional hunger is in the mind
Unlike the physical hunger that is felt in the stomach when there is no food or it is time to eat, emotional hunger is in the mind and includes imagining the smell, taste and texture of certain foods that are craved.
Final thoughts
As you can see, there is a big difference between these two types of hunger.
Can you identify any of these in your own eating habits?
For many, emotional eating is a habit that covers a large part of their life. It is not healthy, neither for the body, nor for the emotional state of those who have been the victim of this type of dysfunctional behavior.
Help is available.
The key is to identify and become aware of the problem and your own patterns in this regard, and then learn the proper coping mechanisms that will eliminate the need to use food for emotional satisfaction.