Do you find your eating habits change when you experience stress? This may be a sign that you experience emotional eating. Emotional eating occurs when you eat for reasons other than when you’re actually hungry to mask or distract you from your feelings. It is normal to sometimes eat for reasons other than hunger, but you may be experiencing emotional eating if you often find yourself eating to avoid dealing with stressful situations, to soothe your feelings, or mask your emotions. Guilt and shame can accompany emotional overeating.
Emotions that often trigger emotional eating and overeating:
- Relationship issues - Stress (work, school, etc.) - Financial pressures - Health problems - Loss of sleep - Significant life change - Anger, loneliness, sadness - Boredom - Reward for something good that happens - Holidays/Family stress
The key to dealing with emotional eating is identifying the source of your emotions and addressing them in a more effective and long-term way. Simply recognizing the trigger, writing it down or speaking it outloud can help you to avoid unrecognized emotional eating or other negative coping skills. Remember to allow others to help and support you.
Stay turned in the coming weeks for more blog articles regarding how to manage this holiday season and the stress, emotions and temptations they can bring.
I’m here for you and I believe in you!
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