The fuel to emotional eating is emotional hunger. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, you will always have emotional hunger. It is what makes us human but this doesn’t mean we have no hope of dealing with it. The emotional hunger isn’t the problem; it is how you deal with it that really counts.

At the moment, the only way you may know how to deal with emotions is to eat or you may be the type who uses food on certain occasions to deal with an emotion. You may even be someone who doesn’t think they use food for comfort but doesn’t really know if they do or not.

For me, I was really unaware of the way I used food for comfort. When I started stripping my diet down and eating low fat foods, I really started to see that I did use food for emotional comfort and a LOT of the time too. I still have moments now where I struggle to keep awareness of my feelings. I am lucky though to have some great support through it.

When you eat for emotional reasons, you can become so attached to dealing with the ups and downs of life with food that any suggestion that you can actually stop this makes you nervous. In Part One: An Introduction to Emotional Eating I mentioned people going into a blind panic and bingeing, this is what I am talking about here. You are dependent on food for comfort. It is like security to you, no wonder it makes you nervous if that was to be taken away! Many people simply cannot imagine being able to handle a bad day without food there for comfort.

When you are an emotional eater, you really do feel truly hungry and when the craving grips you, you can’t tell its not really hunger. People who are not emotional eaters usually eat less when they are troubled by emotion hunger. Their emotional hunger doesn’t feel like physical hunger.

Emotional hunger and the feeling that you are truly hungry, has so much power over you that it drives you to go to almost any lengths to satisfy it. Have you driven to the store late at night just to get some junk food?

There is such power in emotional hunger that if you do not deal with the underlying issues to it, you will always be at its mercy. It will control you.

Some signs of emotional hunger:

  • It results from something emotionally upsetting.
  • It has a quick onset. It comes on rapidly.
  • It demands food immediately.
  • It doesn’t notice how why or what is being eaten.
  • It can even demand more food even after a person is stuffed.
  • It demands particular foods to be fulfilled (like cake and chocolate).

If you are compelled to eat in this way and cannot be patient, then you know it is most likely an emotional issue you are dealing with.

Are you an emotional eater? Do you feel compelled to eat in stressful situations?

Below I have put together some questions you may want to take the time to answer if you feel that you could be an emotional eater. These will help you get a better understanding of yourself and your eating.

  • Is it hard for you to see emotional eating in your life?How hard do you find it to see it?Describe the instances where you think you emotionally eating.Do you think that this is an obstacle to your weight loss?
  • Do you think you can tell the difference when you are experiencing emotional hunger versus physical hunger?
  • Have you ever mistake emotional hunger for physical hunger? Do you eat out of boredom for example? Has it become such a habit that only on reflection you can see what you are doing, as opposed to in the moment it happens?
  • Why do you think you use food rather than address the emotion directly? Do you always use food to deal with emotions?

Activity: During your day be more aware of your eating habits and notice when you eat out of true hunger versus emotional hunger. Note down whether your feelings on this. Were you surprised at how much you used it to numb yourself?

For A Complete Guide on Cravings Click Here

Part One: Introduction to Emotional Eating

Part Three: Food Addiction & Its Origin

Filed under: Emotional Eating • Food & Addiction • Health • Weight Loss

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