Are You Feeding Your Emotions instead of Your Body?

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Have you ever eaten an entire bag of chips while working on a high-priority project at work and not even realized it? Or devoured a piece of cake at an office birthday party without even tasting it?

How about that cookie-dough ice cream you wolfed down last Friday night when you didn’t have a date?

My "Aha!" moment came a few weeks ago when I was in a car accident. All the while I was dealing with people in the other car, the tow truck guy, the police officer, and my insurance company, you would think I would be sick to my stomach.

No, I couldn’t be that lucky. Instead, my stomach and brain screamed, I’m starving!!

It was then that I realized that whenever my emotional level fluctuates, my brain tells me to eat something. But it doesn’t say, “Go grab an apple.” Instead, it’s luring me to something unhealthy like a candy bar.

Emotional eating is often compared to an alcoholic who needs a drink or a smoker who craves a cigarette.

“No single gene is responsible for making someone obese or alcoholic,” said Richard A. Grucza, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University and lead author of a study published in The Archives of General Psychiatry called "The Emerging Link Between Alcoholism Risk and Obesity in the United States".

“But people who eat or drink excessively may share critical characteristics like lack of impulse control and the inability to stop once they get started, a sort
of missing stop signal.”

How do you know if you’re an emotional eater?

The University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center web site says the many differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger.

1. Emotional hunger comes on suddenly and physical hunger occurs gradually.

2. When you crave foods, such as pizza or ice cream, you’re feeling a void that not due to an empty stomach. Being physically hungry will not cause you to crave certain foods. You make choices to fill your stomach.

3. If you’re an emotional eater, you’ll eat even when you are full, while when you're really hungry, you're more likely to stop when you're satisfied.

4. Emotional eating makes you feel of guilty afterwards. Eating when you are physically hungry does not.

"Comfort foods are foods a person eats to obtain or maintain a feeling," says Brian Wansink, PhD, director of the Food and Brand Lab at the University of Illinois. "Comfort foods are often wrongly associated with negative moods, and indeed, people often consume them when they're down or depressed, but interestingly enough, comfort foods are also consumed to maintain good moods."

Unfortunately, nobody has invented a patch to help you avoid your favorite comfort foods or a rehab for emotional eating (except possibly Overeaters Anonmous at http://www.oa.org), and all the diets in the world won’t work if you don’t know why you’re overeating in the place.

An emotional eater needs self-control to quit the habit in much the same way as a smoker or an alcoholic. It takes discipline ... and it’s not easy.

Sources and more information:

Shape – Healthy Eating – Diet Tips – Stop Emotional Eating. Web. 19, January, 2012
http://www.shape.com/healthy-eating/diet-tips/stop-emotional-eating

Mayo Clinic – Health – Weight Loss - Weight-loss help: Gain control of emotional eating. Web. 19, January, 2012
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/weight-loss/MH00025

Medicine Net – Health & Living – Diet & Management - Stop Eating When You're Not Hungry. Web. 19, January, 2012 http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=56586

New York Times – Health – Well – Can you be addicted to foods? Web. 19, January, 2012
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/can-you-be-addicted-to-foods/

WebMd – Healthy Eating and Diet - Emotional Eating: Feeding Your Feelings. Web, 19, 2012
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/emotional-eating-feeding-your-feelings

Reviewed January 19, 2012
by Michele Blacksberg RN
Edited by Jody Smith

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We value and respect our HERWriters' experiences, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice, although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.