Emotional eating is conscious or unconscious eating in response to complicated feelings. A person may feel stress, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, sadness, disappointment, etc. You’re comfortable eating emotionally, and the food is mostly junk food. After some time, you feel bad for overeating, as emotional eating will not eliminate your unhappy feelings but add guilt for overeating. Your feelings have become more harmful than before, as you feel hopeless about overindulging and experiencing negative emotions. The habit of overeating is not suitable for both mental and physical health, so you have to end such a habit by avoiding triggers. Emotional eating is not always unwise, as sometimes you celebrate your success or an event with your family to make memorable memories. Such activity is helpful for mental health.
Why does emotional eating happen?
Some of the primary reasons for emotional eating are mentioned below.
1. Stress
When you feel stressed, your body releases cortisol. Low and high cortisol levels are bad for your health. An increasing level of cortisol causes a craving for food, which produces more calories for taking on more stress.
What is cortisol?
Cortisol is a steroid hormone, also called a stress hormone, because it releases stress. The adrenal glands release this hormone. Balanced cortisol benefits a healthy life, while high cortisol causes high blood pressure and diabetes.
2. Emotional Avoidance
During eating, a person forgets about negative emotions, so he or she feels comfortable for a moment. Emotional eating is also a result of this feeling of relief.
3. Social gatherings
During social gatherings, people enjoy others’ company and eat together. At social gatherings, people consume more because others are still eating. Someone may insist you eat more, or someone may feel nervous and continue to eat at a social gathering. Such gatherings cause overeating, but at the same time, they fill you with positive feelings. You also create great memories. You have to attend to them for mental peace.
4. Satisfaction by reward
When you were a kid, your parents or grandparents may have rewarded you with food for completing any task or given you chocolate when you were sad. This may have been habitual, such as wanting something to eat on every completion or sadness. You may think about your childhood and have your parents rewarded you with food in such situations.
How do I avoid emotional eating?
Cortisol will trigger you to eat something, and such feelings are mostly habitual. You don’t even know your feelings; you pick up food and eat it. Firstly, figure out when you feel like eating. You can try to delay it; by delaying it, you avoid consuming food. Secondly, always place food in a difficult-to-reach place, or do not buy extra food from the grocery store. Thirdly, you have to reward yourself with satisfying things (gaming, crafting, calling someone special, meditating, exercising, watching your favorite movie, etc.) instead of food. Finally, think about your situation, as you may feel bad during such emotions, but these emotions will go away soon. After such emotions, you will feel comfortable.
Opinion Matters:
- What is your opinion about emotional eating?
- What is your strategy to avoid the emotional eating?
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