Emotional eating

Do you eat to relieve stress or feel better? You could be dealing with emotional eating. People do not just eat to satisfy physical hunger. At times, people turn to food for stress relief, comfort, or to reward themselves. When you indulge in emotional eating, you tend to go for junk food, sweet foods, and other unhealthy food options. You might order pizza when you are feeling down or turn to ice cream when you are feeling lonely.

Emotional eating involves using food to fill an emotional need or to make you feel better rather than to satisfy physical hunger. The unfortunate thing is that emotional eating does not solve your problems or negative emotions. In most cases, emotional eating leaves you feeling worse. In the end, the issue that was stressing you will still be there, and you will feel guilty for overeating.

Your Coach Can Help

If you are struggling with emotional eating, our professional coaches at Haleh Coaching can help. They will help you determine if you indeed have an emotional eating disorder. The following questions can help you determine if you are an emotional eater:

  • Do you eat to soothe or calm yourself when you are feeling anxious, sad, or bored?
  • Do you still eat even when you are not feeling hungry?
  • Do you tend to eat more when you are stressed?
  • Do you eat regularly until you feel stuffed?
  • Do you reward yourself with food?
  • Do you feel out of control or powerless around food?
  • Do you feel like food is a friend, or does food make you feel safe?

Occasionally using food as a reward, a pick-me-up, or to celebrate is not harmful. A problem arises when food is your main emotional coping mechanism. You have a problem if your first impulse is to open the refrigerator whenever you are feeling anxious, stressed, exhausted, lonely, or bored. Emotional eating makes you addicted to an unhealthy cycle that does not allow you to address the real problem.

Emotional Eating Compounds the Problem

You can never fill emotional hunger with food. Eating will make you feel good for a moment but will not solve the underlying problem. It would be better to seek professional help and address your problems once and for all. Emotional eating could make you feel worse than you did before, especially when you think about all the unnecessary calories you stuffed your body with. You are likely to beat yourself up for lacking the willpower to say no to emotional eating.

Healthier Ways to Deal with Problems

Our professional coaches at Haleh Coaching will help you identify healthier ways of dealing with problems instead of resulting to emotional eating. By overcoming emotional eating, you will no longer feel powerless around food or have a hard time controlling your weight. It is possible to make a positive change no matter how powerless you feel.

We will help you master healthier ways of dealing with your emotions, conquer cravings, avoid triggers, and finally overcome emotional eating. We will help you distinguish between physical hunger and emotional hunger. You cannot break free from emotional eating until you distinguish the two.