Emotional Eating By Grace lin

By: Grace Lin

What is Emotional Eating?

Emotional Eating, when coping to a negative feeling there will be a moment of eating due to involuntary response from a cluster of negative emotions. (Farrow, C. V., Haycraft, E., & Blissett, J. M. (2015) Many of us turn to  food for comfort, stress relief, or in order to reward ourselves. When we do we tend to reach for junk food, savory, sweets, or some other comforting foods, but some may be unhealthy. We can’t always satisfy that urge through physical hunger. There are multiple situations that could trigger unwanted eating like some days, you may order yourself that McDonald, when you are feeling down. Or buy a tub of ice cream, candy, chips, when you’ve gone through a long, tiring, stressful day at school or work. Emotional eating tends to use food as an outlet to relieve stress and make you feel better. Eating may release dopamine which is a happy hormone. However, emotional eating does not usually solve emotional problems, through eating it could increase your stress or emotion leading you to feel more shame or guilt. Not only does the emotion stay, it would increase your weight through unnecessary consuming.

Differences between an Emotional eater v.s. Physical hunger

Emotional Eater

• Eating to emotions or situations that are not hunger related
• Sudden urges need to eat
• Craving specific food or type of food
• Eating a larger amount of food than regular
• Eating at unusual times 
• Gaining excess weight.
• Feeling embarrassed, bad, or guilty about eating
• consuming high amounts of food during high-stress times.
• Hiding empty bags or containers of food
• continue eating when you are full

Physical Hunger

• Hunger is gradual 
• you can wait for the food
• Open to variety of food type or flavor
• Hunger stops when you are full
• Eating to satisfy physical hunger, you won't feel bad about yourself

Identifying the triggers to your Emotional Eating

This the first step to stopping emotional eating is to identifying your personal triggers. What problems, objects, places, people, or feelings increase the urge you reach for the comfort of food? Many emotional eating is connected to negative feelings, but it can also be triggered by positive emotions, such as rewarding yourself for achieving a goal or celebrating an event.

Why does Emotional eating Happen?

Caused By:

• Excitement
• sadness
• anxiety
• depression 
• anger
• loneliness
• boredom
• changes 
• confusion
• frustration
• loss
• resentment
• stress
• sleep deprived

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Ways to Maintain Emotional Eating

• ​Distracting yourself: by listening to music, going outside for a walk, when do something hands on can distract you from the eating
• Identifying the emotional triggers
• Understanding those triggers 
• learn to accept the good and bad  feelings
• Find healthy alternatives 
• Keep a journal, record and monitor your emotional eating. It is important to recognize the patterns, food, and emotions at that moment.
• Take a break, allow yourself to take 30 minute break to relax, decompress, and refresh 
• Finding Support, it is very important to keep close relationships and social activities. Spend time with positive people who enhance your life, and they will help prevent you from the negative effects of stress.

Examples: 
- have proper sleep (aim for 8 hours)
- socialize with friends 
- take a light walk
- daily exercising
- make time for a break

References

Blechert, J., Goltsche, J. E., Herbert, B. M., & Wilhelm, F. H. (2014). Eat your troubles away: Electrocortical and experiential correlates of food image processing are related to emotional eating style and emotional state. Biological Psychology, 96, 94–101. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.12.007

Does Eating Give You Pleasure, Or Make You Anxious? (n.d.). Retrieved from https://health.ucsd.edu/news/2011/Pages/05-19-anorexia-nervosa-dopamine.aspx.

Dweck, J. S., Jenkins, S. M., & Nolan, L. J. (2014). The role of emotional eating and stress in the influence of short sleep on food consumption. Appetite, 72, 106–113. doi: 10.1016/j.appet.2013.10.001

Emotional Eating. (2019, October 19). Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/diets/emotional-eating.htm.

Farrow, C. V., Haycraft, E., & Blissett, J. M. (2015). Teaching our children when to eat: how parental feeding practices inform the development of emotional eating—a longitudinal experimental design. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 101(5), 908–913. doi: 10.3945/ajcn.114.103713
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Godman, H. (2017, August). Struggling with emotional eating? Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/diet-and-weight-loss/struggling-with-emotional-eating. 

McQuillan, S. (2019, September 4). Emotional Eating: 9 Ways to Stop It and Lose Weight. Retrieved from https://www.psycom.net/stop-emotional-eating?slide=7#showbox.

Meye, F. J., & Adan, R. A. (2014). Feelings about food: the ventral tegmental area in food reward and emotional eating. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 35(1), 31–40. doi: 10.1016/j.tips.2013.11.003

Staff, F. E. (2017, August 11). Emotional Eating. Retrieved from https://familydoctor.org/emotional-eating-in-children-and-teens/.

Thorpe, M. (2019). 11 Natural Ways to Lower Your Cortisol Levels. [online] Healthline. Available at: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/ways-to-lower-cortisol.

Volkow, N. D., Wang, G.-J., & Baler, R. D. (2011). Reward, dopamine and the control of food intake: implications for obesity. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(1), 37–46. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2010.11.001
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Understanding Body and Brain Communication Can Ease Emotional Eating. (2019, July 11). Retrieved from https://womeneat.com/understanding-body-and-brain-communication-can-ease-emotional-eating/.
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Emotional Eating. (2019, October 19). Retrieved from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/diets/emotional-eating.htm.
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