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Start by noticing your cravings and desire to use food or to binge eat as a way to cope. Without judgment, accept the urge as beyond your control.
- Overview
- What causes someone to eat because of their emotions?
- Emotional hunger vs. physical hunger
- How to stop emotional eating
- When to seek help
Do you race to the pantry when you feel down or otherwise upset? You’re not alone. It’s common for people to turn to food for comfort as a way to cope with big, difficult feelings.
When you eat in response to emotions, it’s called emotional eating. Everyone does it sometimes.
Our bodies need food to survive. It makes sense that eating lights up the reward system in the brain and makes you feel better.
When emotional eating happens often, and you don’t have other ways to cope, it can be a problem.
Although it may feel like a way to cope in those moments, eating doesn’t address the true issue. If you’re feeling stressed, anxious, bored, lonely, sad, or tired, food won’t fix those feelings.
For some people, this cycle of turning to food to cope creates guilt and shame — more tough feelings to navigate.
Almost anything can trigger a desire to eat. Common external reasons for emotional eating may include:
•work stress
•financial worries
•health issues
•relationship struggles
People who follow restrictive diets or have a history of dieting are more likely to emotionally eat.
Humans must eat to live. It’s natural to need food and to desire certain tastes or textures.
You may wonder how to tell the difference between emotional and physical hunger cues. It can be tricky. Sometimes, it’s a combination of both.
If you haven’t eaten for several hours, or generally don’t eat enough in a day, you are more likely to experience emotional eating.
Here are some clues to help you tell the difference.
Start an emotion diary
The more you understand your habits, the better. Eating in response to emotion can happen automatically. The more you understand how you feel when you do certain things, the better your chance at changing things. Try keeping a record of those times when you eat but are not physically hungry. Make a note of: •what was happening •how you were feeling •any emotions you noticed when you got the urge to eat You may also want to include a place to write what you did. Did you eat right away? Did you wait a few minutes? Did you do something to distract yourself? Try not to judge yourself on your findings. Try to be genuinely curious about what is happening when you eat in response to emotions. This takes a lot of practice. Be kind to yourself as you start to explore. It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Find other ways to cope
Once you have more information about the emotions, situations, or thoughts that can trigger eating, you can start to make changes. If you notice that you always eat when you feel stressed, it’s the stress that needs attention. Think about some things you can do to better relieve your stress. If you notice you eat when you’re bored, consider ways to manage your boredom. What else could you do to fill your time? It takes time and practice to shift your mindset from reaching for food to engaging in other activities. Experiment with different things to find what works for you.
Move your body
Moving your body can be a powerful way to manage stress and anxiety. Activity helps to reduce levels of stress hormones in your body. It also releases endorphins to give your mood a boost. An exercise routine can help manage underlying emotional triggers for eating. It doesn’t have to be intense. If you’re not currently active, consider doing a five-minute walk or some gentle stretching. Notice how this makes you feel. There seems to be an extra benefit to mindfulness movements like yoga. People who routinely practice yoga report overall lower levels of stress and anxiety.
Change is hard work, but you deserve to feel better. Making changes to your emotional eating can be an opportunity to get more in touch with yourself and your feelings.
Emotional eating can be part of disordered eating. Disordered eating behaviors can lead to developing an eating disorder. You don’t need to have a diagnosed eating disorder to seek help.
If you are feeling uncomfortable with your eating, reach out for support. It’s brave to ask for help if you are struggling.
You can talk with your healthcare professional about your concerns. You can also connect with a mental health professional or a dietitian to help you address both the physical and mental sides of emotional eating.
- Drink enough water. Studies show that around 37% of people confuse thirst for hunger, often because the same part of the brain interprets both signals.
- Eat more protein. You may associate a high-protein diet with people looking to build muscle or gain weight. However, protein is an essential nutrient for making up virtually every tissue within the body, from skin and nails to muscles and bones, and also plays a significant role in regulating appetite.
- Eat wholesome foods. If you’ve ever had cravings after consuming fruit juice or sugary carbonated beverages or eating cookies, processed meats, and fast food, this may be because these foods contain empty calories.
- Drink some coffee. Coffee is loved for its energy-boosting properties, but did you know that it also works as an appetite suppressant? This is because it contains caffeine, a natural stimulant with thermogenic effects that may temporarily increase your metabolism and decrease your appetite.
- Jillian Kubala, MS, RD
- Eat enough calories. It’s important to fuel your body properly to keep it healthy and functioning at its best. Without enough calories and nutrients, it’s natural that your body signals you to eat, which can cause strong cravings for certain foods.
- Avoid restrictive diets. Picture kicking off a new diet, feeling ready to change your eating patterns and reach new health goals. Unfortunately, just hours or days later, you get stronger and stronger cravings for all the foods you cannot eat.
- Don’t let yourself get ravenously hungry. Although hunger is a natural body cue that shouldn’t be feared, letting yourself get too hungry might increase the risk of strong food cravings.
- Eat filling, nutrient-dense foods. A simple way to keep cravings in check, feel fuller for longer, and stabilize your blood sugar levels is to enjoy foods that promote feelings of fullness.
- Why Is Less Nutritious Food So Addictive? There’s a reason a bag of chips is so much tastier than a plate of carrot sticks and dip. Manufacturers who produce processed food have one goal in mind.
- Out of Sight, Out of Mind. Ever notice how quickly and easily you can finish a bowl of M&Ms when they’re right in front of you? One of the ways to help manage those cravings is to remove yourself from seeing the culprit in the first place.
- Stock Up on Nutritious Food. Focusing on improving your eating habits is a more positive and effective strategy than trying to stop eating processed food altogether.
- Try a Glass of Water. Before grabbing that last cookie from the lunch room, ask yourself whether you’re actually hungry or thirsty. It’s quite common for people to confuse signs of dehydration for hunger because the feelings of thirst are too subtle compared to those of hunger.
Sep 28, 2024 · How can we actually eat intuitively? How do our hunger hormones change as we age? How can we reduce unhealthy food cravings? Neuroscientist and addiction psychiatrist Jud Brewer, M.D., Ph.D., answers all that and more in this episode of the mindbodygreen podcast.
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