What is Emotional Eating Emotional eating is common in today's society. It is triggered by how an individual is feeling and leads to eating food when they are not hungry to give or increase the feel good factor. Emotional eating is not limited to bad feelings such as stress, anger, sorrow and depression. It is also associated with good feelings such as happiness and contentment. So why do we eat out of emotion When we have a bad experience many of us will reach for the first thing that makes us feel better and this is often food. It only takes a small amount of sugary refined food to improve our mood but this is normally high in calorie content. We consume this food in minutes if not seconds without even thinking about it. After eating this we are often racked with guilt and the underlying issue is still there waiting to be resolved. Conversely, we could have passed an exam or got a new job or just simply be having friends round for a barbeque, on these occasions we eat and drink excessively to celebrate our good emotions, not caring about the consequences and generally the feel good factor lasts longer. Whichever circumstance leads to emotional eating and binge eating we always live to regret it, normally experiencing feelings of failure and self loathing. Getting on the scales and seeing a weight gain enforces the negative feelings. Effects on Health Emotional eating and compulsive overeating are unhealthy both nutritionally and mentally. Most emotional eaters have a bad attitude towards food. When we overeat most of us will compensate by under eating the following day. Either way nutritionally we have deprived ourselves of essential vitamins and minerals, and the knock on effect is that our bodies do not know what food it is going to receive for energy so it holds on to our fat reserves, slows down our metabolism and makes it hard to lose pounds. Emotional eating like comfort eating and Yo-Yo dieting leads to obesity and is a major factor in health related matters such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer and can lead to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia. Effects on Emotion Emotional eating is far worse mentally when used to mask stress, anger, sorrow etc. as it is used as a tool to make the individual feel better in themselves instead of dealing with the underlying issues that has led to this use of food. Emotional eating will inevitably leave the individual with feelings of failure and sometimes depression as well as making it hard to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.
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