When Emotions Affect Your Appetite
Have you ever felt sad or angry and then you searched for good food? Be careful, you may be experiencing emotional eating. At that time, food might calm your mind and release your stress for a moment. Eating when emotional can cause the amount of food you eat to go out of control and lead to weight gain.
What is that emotional eating?
Emotional eating or emotional eating is when you use food as a way to deal with your emotions instead of eating because you are hungry. When you are angry, sad, stressed, etc., some of you may seek food to calm your emotions. Food is usually used as a distraction. At this point, you are choosing to eat only so that you are comfortable rather than thinking about your problem or condition that is hurting you.
During times of stress, the body experiences an increase in the hormone cortisol in response to stress. At this time, you also experience an increase in appetite as your body attempts to provide the energy it needs to respond to stress. In the end, you will be looking for food to comfort you.
Emotional eating usually associated with negative feelings, such as when you are feeling lonely, sad, anxious, scared, angry, bored, or stressed. These emotions usually cause you to eat more without thinking about what food and how much you eat. If this is done continuously, it is possible emotional eating can affect your weight, health and overall well-being.
Emotional eating can cause weight gain
People who tend to associate food with comfort and not for reasons of hunger are usually more prone to experiencing it emotional eating. Whether you are aware of it or not, you usually eat when you are having a difficult problem, are under stress, or are bored. When you feel these emotions, you can end up eating a lot of food without thinking.
Food consumed when emotional eating usually those that contain lots of calories and are high in carbohydrates. For example, ice cream, biscuits, chocolate, snacks, french fries, pizza, hamburgers, and others. Not to mention, if you frequently use food as an escape to release stress, you may be able to eat a large amount more than three times a day. This is what can lead to weight gain, even obesity if it continues.
Emotional eating can be formed from childhood
As much as 40% of individuals tend to eat more when under stress, while about 40% eat less, and the remaining 20% do not experience a change in the amount of food when under stress.
This emotional eating pattern can be formed indirectly from childhood. For example, your parents may offer you food when you are sad, lonely, or angry to calm you down and make you feel good. In addition, parents who often reward your favorite food when you succeed in achieving something also support emotional eating behavior. Therefore, do not use food as a reward or punishment for your child.
What’s the difference with binge-eating?
The difference is in the amount of food consumed. In people with emotional eating, perhaps he can eat moderate to large quantities and he eats them with great emotion. Meanwhile, people with binge-eating could finish a larger amount of food.
Binge-eating also have recurring episodes of eating. In addition, they also eat faster, hide the amount of food they eat because they feel embarrassed, and feel guilty after doing binge-eating.
How to solve emotional eating?
Because of the impact of emotional eating can make your health worse. Better, overcome emotional eating with this way:
Before you start eating, it’s best to ask yourself if you are eating because you feel really hungry. Usually, if you feel really hungry, you will feel signs, such as a “growling” stomach, difficulty concentrating, and irritability. If you don’t feel really hungry, you may want to delay your mealtime later.
You can cut back on habits emotional eating By making a note of your meal. In these notes, you can write down what foods you ate, your mood when you ate, whether you were really hungry at that time, and at what time you ate. You can study your notes. If you find a time when you overeat when your feelings are emotional, then other times you can avoid it even more. You can release your emotions before eating, either by walking or doing your favorite activity, this way is healthier.
Find other activities to escape from your emotions
If you are emotional and want to eat, you should immediately find other activities that can calm you down, such as listening to music, writing, reading, playing musical instruments, painting, sports, and others. This can make you less likely to view food as emotional gratification. With that, habit emotional eating You will gradually diminish.
Hello Health Group does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.
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