Understanding Emotional Hunger

We all know the feeling of eating just because we are feeling a certain way and not necessarily because we are hungry. Eating to fill a void or to make us feel better is a great and simple way to explain emotional eating.

Emotional eating happens to us all, at one time or another. Emotional eating is a double-edged sword. We may initially eat something unhealthy because we are feeling blue and then feel doubly guilty afterward.

Emotional eating feels good while we are doing it, but may wreak havoc on our diets, our health, and our minds. As the underlying problem goes unresolved, we simply cannot undo the overeating.

There are deep underlying feelings behind emotional eating. Without delving into what is behind those emotional feelings, the continuous pattern of eating to feel better will continue.

How Emotional Hunger Affects Your Weight

Eating can be a distraction to what you have on your mind. Major life events or, more commonly, the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt your weight-loss efforts. These triggers might include: relationship conflicts, stressful work, fatigue, financial pressures, health problems and even boredom and guilt.

Emotional eating has an adverse affect on your health. For some of us, the only way to relieve stress is by eating. Have you ever noticed that when you are really stressed about something, you turn to comfort food for soothing? A comfort food may be in the form of a favorite childhood dessert or a really gooey bowl of macaroni and cheese. More often than not, emotional eating includes choosing mostly foods that are not good for us such as fast foods, desserts or foods that are high in carbohydrates. In any event, soothing stress by eating is all too common and can be the cause of some serious weight gain if this becomes an all too familiar habit.

What makes it even worse is the fact that once you have gone into emotional eating mode, and then feeling guilty, a vicious cycle begins. Weight gain will only compound the problem and contribute to it further, leaving you in a lose/lose situation.

Many individuals that turn to comfort food for support and never learn to trust themselves to get the help and support they need whether in the form of family or friends or even the help of a professional. Therefore, their only means of support is food, which can start an emotional overeating cycle. If you feel you are caught in the emotional eating cycle, then it is important to reach out and get the help you need and deserve.

This article was reviewed and approved by Dr. Fisher. Dr. Jon Fisher is a Board Certified Family Physician and a recognized authority on How to Lose Weight, lower cholesterol and body contouring in a medically supervised environment. Read his full bio