Emotional Eating

Emotional eating is the number one thing that makes people gain weight or go of a diet. It is not always a physical problem that is keeping you from loosing weight but an emotional one. Before you start a new diet, it’s a good idea to look at some of the most common emotional hurdles to weight loss and see if any of them could be keeping you from losing weight. Emotional eating can sometimes be harder to break through than a medical problem that keeps you from losing weight, but in the long run dealing with these emotional issues can help you stay thin and healthy.

Millions of people have emotional eating problems they are compulsive eaters or binge eaters who eat food because they are happy, because they are depressed, lonely, sad, upset, or bored. Emotional eating occurs when people are in an emotional state then they usually need some type of comfort and food provides that.

That is the reason why emotional eating is called comfort foods. The chemicals in traditional comfort foods like chocolate, ice cream, potato chips or French fries; any food that is starchy, high fat, or high in sugar can trigger the brain to release serotonin, which is a calming hormone that floods the body with a feeling of well being and happiness. So if you eat certain foods like chocolate when you’re upset then soon you will start to feel better.

Then you’ll associate feeling better with eating chocolate, and you’ll eat chocolate whenever you’re upset. Keep doing that and soon you’ll discover your pants don’t fit anymore. Anything can trigger emotional eating but for most people, stress and negative emotions like fear and loneliness are the strongest triggers. If you have always been an emotional eater you might not even realize that you start reaching for the ice cream or the chips every time you have a stressful day, a long commute, or other difficult situation to deal with.

Emotional eating causes most people to cheat on their diets and stops them from losing weight or achieve better health. It can be very tough to break emotional dependence on food. But controlling the urge to binge on food or to eat whenever you’re upset is the only way that you can really overcome your weight problem and stay healthy and fit for life.

Using tips and tricks can help you control your emotional eating and help you stay on your diet and weight loss. The thing with emotional eating is that you have to ask yourself when you feel hungry am I physical hungry or am I just eating out of emotions If you’ve been an emotional eater your whole life you might not recognize the difference. When you are really hungry your stomach will growl and you will feel a little weak and tired. That’s your body’s way of saying that it needs fuel. Try letting yourself get really hungry before a meal just so that you can feel what it feels like when your body is hungry.