Don’t Let Stress & Depression Affect Your Health!

Comfort foods, the are a big part of emotional eating and the food isn’t necessarily the healthiest either. We usually turn to this comfort food for stress relief, or as a reward. However, if you’re consuming those comfort foods as a part of emotional eating, it won’t solve any of your emotional problems. Ultimately, this will lead to a chain of reactions such as gaining weight, which leads to major health complications and possibly even death. This article with over over what exactly emotional eating is and how you can avoid becoming stressed out and over eating as a result.

It’s important to first recognize your emotional eating and what exactly is causing you to trigger this type of eating. This is the first step into breaking free from that emotional eating. It’s very important to change your habits before the situation gets worse. Make sure to keep healthy habits, learn how to cope with our stresses and this will lead to a healthier lifestyle where you are not dealing with the consequences of emotional eating! Keep reading on to learn how you can understand and recognize your emotional eating.

How Do You Recognize Your Emotional Eating?

First and foremost, understand your emotional eating. The food you eat at this period of time is used to make you feel better. Your body reads it as filling your emotional needs, rather than filling your stomach. Therefore, you’re not feeling full as soon as you should be causing you to keep eating until you’re satisfied. Your first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever you’re upset, angry, lonely, stressed, exhausted or bored when eating is your primary emotional coping mechanism. This leads to a get stuck in an unhealthy cycle where the real feeling or problem is never addressed.

I hate to break it to you, but your emotional hunger can’t be filled with food. Even though it seems like the food may feel good at the moment, the feelings that are triggered are still there. And because of the unnecessary calories consumed you often feel worse than you did before! A common result of this is the feeling of guilt and not having the willpower to say no or stop. If this is kept up , you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a harder time controlling your weight and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.

How Do You Know If You Struggle With Emotional Eating?

Now there’s a big difference between emotional hunger versus physical hunger. It important to be able to distinguish the two and it can be trickier than it sounds, especially if you regularly use food to deal with your feelings.

• Emotional Hunger Is Sudden. It hits you in an instant and feel overwhelming and urgent. Whereas, physical hunger, comes on more gradually and the urge to eat doesn’t feel as dire or demand instant satisfaction.
• Emotional Hunger Craves Specific Comfort Foods. Usually, when you’re physically hungry almost anything sounds good, that includes healthy foods such as vegetables as well. However, emotional hunger craves fatty foods or sugary snacks that provide an instant rush.
• Emotional Hunger Often Leads To Mindless Eating. 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 just keep wanting more and more, and then you keep eating more and more until you’re uncomfortably stuffed! Your stomach will feel more satisfied once you feel full.
• Emotional Hunger Isn’t Located In The Stomach. The hunger and food you’re craving 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.