Emotional eating: How to control it

Emotional eating disorder happens when a person deals with their emotions by eating food. They will eat to suppress strong negative emotions. They will end up eating a bag of chips or a whole pizza as a way of eating their feelings. Some people avoid food when they are stressed and some eat a lot when they are feeling anxious. For the latter, food becomes their best friend.

When a person has a stress eating disorder, they end up feeling guilty and ashamed for consuming more food than normal. This leads to weight gain and has an impact on their physical and mental well-being.

Emotional eating causes

Anything that worries a person can lead to emotional eating. It could be personal issues like a breakup or losing a loved one. It could be financial stress, work pressure, family problems, health issues, or just plain boredom. It affects both men and women, but women are twice more likely to develop emotional eating.

How to stop emotional eating

The first step is to recognize you have an emotional eating disorder. It’s important to find out what triggers this emotional eating. Is it certain situations in life or is any kind of negative feeling leading to stress eating disorder? Below are some ways to stop emotional eating:

New activities

You can go on a walk to calm yourself down. You can read a book, watch a movie, or jot down in your journal the problems and troubles you are facing. Find other ways to decompress yourself. You need to reset your mind and divert it.

Meditate

You can’t dull an emotion by consuming food. Yoga can be beneficial in keeping your mind aligned with your body. It will help you get rid of negative emotions. Just a simple breathing exercise will help your mind relax.

Plan a healthy diet

You can be stressed every day and eating junk isn’t the solution. It can lead to health problems. Your body needs enough nutrients to be healthy and maintain your weight. Make a diet chart. Eat healthy foods like fruits, dry fruits, popcorn, and other low-calorie food when you’re stressed.

Throw junk food out

Clean your pantry and don’t keep any unhealthy food. Throw out all the chocolates, ice creams, and chips. You can’t eat them every day and not gain weight. If you can’t control yourself, at least try to manage how much you eat. Portion control can be tried if you can’t completely abandon junk food.

Seek help

If nothing works out and you still find yourself reaching for unhealthy food when you are feeling low, then seek therapy. A therapist will be able to map your problems deeper and will come out with an effective strategy to tackle this emotional eating disorder. You can also talk to your friends and family about it.

Is emotional hunger and real hunger the same?

We live to eat. But that doesn’t mean we eat to feel better about our problems. Always keep in mind that food isn’t going to solve the problem you have in mind. It will only add to your list of troubles because you will likely experience a lot of shame and guilt for eating an entire pizza.

Address your problems ahead and don’t think food is going to solve them for you. Below are some key differences between emotional hunger and true hunger.

You can control emotional eating by identifying what triggers your mood. Distract yourself. Put some music on and dance when you’re feeling low. Even if you end up eating a lot more than usual, don’t give yourself a hard time for it. Have the willpower to control your eating habits moving forward.