Have you ever found yourself turning to food when you’re angry, upset, stressed or bored?
Have you ever found yourself eating past the point of being full?
Just about everyone with a weight problem eats for emotional reasons from time to time. It could be when you are anxious, sad. stressed or overwhelmed. But you also eat because you are lonely or bored. Or even angry. You might soothe yourself with food because you don't want to have these feelings. Food can certainly distract you temporarily.
But eating doesn't solve the problem that led to your feeling that emotion in the first place. In fact eating emotionally creates another problem - you feel bad about straying from your diet.
So to put this into context I want to share a story from Emma that I hear very often - she often ate when she felt out of sorts, not really feeling herself, so for example one day Emma’s boss asked her to stay late to finish some work for a third night in a row. She had many negative thoughts like - He is so inconsiderate; Doesn’t he think I have a life? Why should I have to work late? Why doesn’t he ask someone else? And so on.
She kept having these thoughts whilst working late so when she finally got home she was still upset and angry and then she completely abandoned her food plan, she went on to devour a whole tub of ice cream, but afterwards she felt angry at herself.
Had Emma been able to look at the situation in a different way she might have been able to do some problem solving so she could have been more assertive at work and told her boss no she and couldn’t work late, but instead she was feeling very angry and upset, so to immediately feel better she used food to soothe herself.
Now if you take a minute to think about people without weight problems, it would never occur to most of them to eat when they were upset. They just don't rely on food to help them feel better.
So that explains What Emotional Eating is.
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