What is Emotional Eating?
1.
Emotional eating is a disorder. When one feels depressed, sad, incomplete, they eat to fill the hole that is empty within them. Most common food of choice is as follows: Chocolate, mashed potatoes, popcorn, french fries, ICE CREAM, cake, burritos, trail mix, anything one is craving pretty much, etc. You get the idea. It is a vicious cycle that does not seem to quit until one finds happiness again through other means than food.
Sally has just been dumped by Jimmy. She feels lost and alone without him. To make herself feel better, she runs out to the nearest supermarket to buy a pint of Ben & Jerrys which she will eat in it's entirety to feel whole again. She has fallen into the trap of emotional eating.
See
2.
Emotional eating is compulsive eating of food based on a person’s feelings rather than based on physical hunger and nutritional needs. One does not have to be overweight to fall in this category.
It’s thus common that emotional eaters associate certain food with at least one type of feeling of comfort, relief, joy, pleasure, and so on. To put it another way some types of foods end up being used like a drug or alcohol.
In overcoming emotional eating there is a challenge of separating one’s emotions from food and seeing food for what it is: as a nutritional source for the body. Like any habit forming and compulsive behavior emotional eating can be overcome.
Emotional eating includes when a person is happy he/she feels a compulsion to eat; a compulsion to eat when sad; when tired; a compulsion to eat in order to feel some sense of pleasure; and so on. The obsessive urge to eat is stimulated by emotions not by physical hunger and nutritional needs.
See
3.
Emotional eating is compulsive eating of food based on a person’s feelings rather than based on physical hunger and nutritional needs. One does not have to be overweight to fall in this category.
It’s thus common that emotional eaters associate certain food with at least one type of feeling of comfort, relief, joy, pleasure, and so on. To put it another way some types of foods end up being used like a drug or alcohol.
In overcoming emotional eating there is a challenge of separating one’s emotions from food and seeing food for what it is: as a nutritional source for the body. Like any habit forming and compulsive behavior emotional eating can be overcome.
Emotional eating includes when a person is happy he/she feels a compulsion to eat; a compulsion to eat when sad; when tired; a compulsion to eat in order to feel some sense of pleasure; and so on. The obsessive urge to eat is stimulated by emotions not by physical hunger and nutritional needs.
See
