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Get To Know Your Emotional Hunger

Emotional hungerHave you ever made room for dessert even though you’re already full? Out of nowhere in the middle of doing something important, you start feeling hungry? Do you feel hungry before any important meeting? If yes, then you should check your emotional status as this might be due to emotional hunger!

What Is Emotional Hunger or Emotional Eating? 

Emotional hunger or emotional eating is the practice of consuming large quantities of food, usually ‘comfort’ or junk foods in response to feelings instead of hunger. Emotional eating is a maladaptive coping strategy used by many of us to deal with negative emotions. Emotional eating can be caused by many reasons which include stress, tension, depression, boredom, and sometimes due to excitement.

Under high stress, your biological age can be 30 times higher than your calendar age. Modern life is full of frustrations, deadlines, and demands. For many people, stress has become a way of life. When stress becomes overwhelming, it can damage your health, mood, relationships and quality of life.

Stress also affects our food preferences. Emotional distress increases the intake of food high in fat and sugar, and you sleep excessively under stress. Also, some people consume alcohol and all this leads to gaining weight around your abdomen and unfortunately, abdominal obesity puts you at risk for several lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and heart related issues.

In stress, adrenal glands release a hormone called cortisol, which makes you crave for carbohydrates, sugar and fatty foods. Food is soothing due to the chemical changes it creates in your body. Chocolate is an excellent example. When junk food is calling your name, it’s possible to put boundaries on your emotional eating habits. Ready to break free from stress eating?

The Solution To Beat Emotional Eating 

  • When you’re tempted to snack for emotional reasons, try moving instead. Just walk for 10 minutes.
  • Try a quick breathing exercise: Slowing down your breathing can trick your body into thinking you are going to sleep, which in turn relaxes your body. Close your eyes and slowly breathe in and out.
  • Sip black tea: A study in the journal of Psychopharmacology found that subjects who consumed black tea, experienced a 47% drop in their cortisol levels.
  • Try self-massage: It can be as simple as sitting down, rubbing your feet, one at a time, over the top of the heel, until you feel relaxed.

You’ll eat better and healthier foods if you don’t let your emotions guide your food choices! So be mindful about your choices. For more on stress, you can check Healthy Reads. To help you cope with emotional hunger or help you manage stress better, reach out to a GOQii Coach by subscribing for personalized health coaching here: https://goqiiapp.page.link/bsr

Do leave your thoughts in the comments below!

#BeTheForce

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Stop feeding your emotions!!

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Gone are those days when our ancestors considered food as a basic source for well being. They used to EAT to LIVE, but things have changed thereafter and now it’s LIVE to EAT. Eating is more than something we do to nourish our bodies with vital nutrients. We don’t always eat simply to satisfy hunger. We now turn to food for comfort, stress relief, or as a reward. It’s like an activity we do out of habit, like nail biting, hair twirling, or finger tapping. Recent trends show that we habitually turn to food in response to certain emotions. Like for instance some have the habit of gorging on chocolates when they are sad or depressed. Whether you feel angry, sad, bored, or even excited—food can act as a buffer against these emotions.

Emotional eaters know that it’s easier to stuff down our feelings with each bite rather than spilling the emotions and create nuisance. Unfortunately, emotional eating doesn’t fix emotional problems. It usually makes you feel worse. Afterwards, not only does the original emotional issue remain, but you also feel guilty for having overeaten. Compounding the problem, you stop learning healthier ways to deal with your emotions, you have a hard time controlling your weight, and you feel increasingly powerless over both food and your feelings.

So coming to the point, where do you start if you want to stop eating emotionally?

But, before that ever wondered why we turn to food when emotionally distressed? Here is a short explanation to make you more aware. When we eat food, chemicals are released from the food in the body. These chemicals have a strong impact on our emotional health, since food and mood are intricately connected. We feel sadder when we’re hungry due to lack of neurochemicals in the brain. To elaborate, through eating we experience changes in serotonin, endorphins, and dopamine levels in our brain – all of which control our moods. Sugar, for example, causes serotonin in the brain which makes us feel more balanced and equitable. Anti-depressants uses this same chemical mechanism to improve moods. So coming back to point, How and what do we do to deal with this?

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The first step is awareness, recognizing what triggers you to eat emotionally—and WHY?

As I mentioned earlier, People eat for many different reasons. What situations, places, or feelings make you reach for the comfort of food? Each time you reach for foods (or even feel a craving come on), ask yourself, “Am I really hungry or am I just responding to something else that is happening?” If hunger isn’t the reason, it’s not always easy to pinpoint the reason why you feel like eating. By tracking your food (and related notes) more regularly, you could notice trends, like a tendency to overeat on Mondays, for example, and then pinpoint your true feelings from there. Ask yourself what it is about Mondays that leads to overeating (Stress from getting the kids to school? Anger over going to a job you hate? or holiday deprived ?) Notice if you tend to munch in the evenings. Is it out of boredom, loneliness, anger, sadness, anxiety or an unhappy relationship? Once you identify your emotional eating triggers, the next step is identifying healthier ways to feed your feelings.

It’s not enough to understand the cycle of emotional eating or even to understand your triggers, we need to proceed to step 2 which explains you to feed your feelings better. In order to stop emotional eating, you have to find other ways to fulfill yourself emotionally. You need alternatives to food that you can turn to for emotional fulfillment.

Some alternatives you can test out are: Call someone who always makes you feel better, play with your pets or kids, or look at a favorite photo or cherished memento whenever you feel low, depressed or lonely. If you’re anxious, expend your nervous energy by dancing to your favorite song, squeezing a stress ball, or taking a brisk walk in fresh air. If you’re exhausted, treat yourself with a hot cup of tea, take a bath, go to a spa or massage, light some scented candles, wrap yourself in a warm blanket or take a break and enjoy the weekend getaway. If boredom kills you, read a good book, watch a comedy show, explore the outdoors, or turn to an activity you enjoy (woodworking, playing the guitar, shooting hoops, scrapbooking, etc)

Last step to deal emotional eating requires long term modification i.e. healthy lifestyle habits. When you’re physically strong, relaxed, and well rested, you’re better able to handle the stone and lime that life inevitably throws in your path. But, when you’re already exhausted and overwhelmed, any little hiccup has the potential to send you off the rails and straight towards the kitchen>> refrigerator>>food. Exercise, sleep, and other healthy lifestyle habits will help you get through difficult times without emotional eating. Make daily exercise a priority.

Physical activity does wonders for your mood and your energy levels, and it’s also a powerful stress reducer. Give yourself permission to take at least 30 minutes every day to relax, decompress, and unwind. This is your time to take a break from your responsibilities and recharge your batteries for the next day. Connect with others. Don’t underestimate the importance of close relationships and social activities. Spending time with positive people who enhance your life will help protect you from the negative effects of stress.

With an arsenal of activities you can do besides eating, trekking, journaling and distracting yourself in a positive way, you’ll overcome your emotional eating problems once and for all. You might not be successful every time, but if you accept your mistakes and move forward, continuing to work on your issues consider you’re on the right path to stop the emotional eating cycle.

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Mindful Eating: Mind your Mood-part 4

emotional-eating

My previous three blogs talked of the concept of Mindful eating and how mindless Eating can be harmful. In my second blog, I talked of why should you eat slowly to enjoy your meal ( https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-slow-down-and-enjoy-your-meal-2/) and shared some tips on how can you eat slowly. The third blog talked of portion control and how to be wise ( https://goqii.com/blog/mindful-eating-control-portions-and-be-wise-part-3/). Continuing in this 5 Part series on Mindful Eating, Today, I will take you through how stress eating can be harmful and should be avoided.

Have you noticed why buttered popcorns are sold out quickly during a movie intermission break? Or why the entire packet of Oreos or chips is emptied when you are amidst a sea of emotions? That’s because certain foods can be emotionally comforting. In most cases these comfort foods have high fat and sugar and are low on nutrition. They are still comforting because they hit some neurons in the brain which can lead to false perception of well-being.

Turning to food to make you feel better is ‘Emotional eating’.

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It is not necessarily a bad thing to eat food from time to time- as a pick me up meal or as a reward treat or as a celebration feast. But, if food becomes your primary coping mechanism to ward off your anxiety, loneliness, boredom, anger, frustration, exhaustion etc, and your first impulse, as soon as you are upset is to dig into a tub of ice-cream, it calls for your attention. Feeding your emotion with food may feel good for that moment but, doesn’t resolve the underlying problem. And, more often you may end up feeling worse later than you did before, because of the un-necessary calorie binge you undertook. Not to mention the physical havoc on your metabolism.

The guilt-feeling powerless over emotions and impulse eating leads to a very unhealthy vicious cycle, landing one up in physical and emotional misshape. So no matter how hard it looks to break this vicious cycle, it is still possible to make a positive change. All it requires is some effort by you.

To help you make the breakthrough out of this vicious cycle and this mindless eating habit, I am sharing few pointers which work best when you work on them in the listed order below:

  1. Be Aware: and acknowledge your habit of emotional eating. If your near/dear ones have pointed out to you or you know it by yourself that you may eat out of emotional triggers, take it seriously! Being aware of your habits is the first positive step. Make a move ahead then and identify- what emotions can lead you to do binge eating. Is it some positive ones like exhilaration, victory, success? Or negative ones like frustration, loneliness, anxiety, depression, anger, boredom etc. Then know your comfort foods- is it sweets, chocolates, ice-creams or salty ones like chips, fries or some junk food like pizza, burger, maggi etc. that drive your emotional cravings. You may come up with multiple choices for multiple emotions and it is absolutely okay. You may also notice that your choice of comfort food is entirely different from others. So accept it.

# Maintain a food journal to help you identify your emotions and foods associated with it or use food log feature in GOQii app to get this task done.

  1. Know your Hunger cues: Why you wish to eat. The hunger cue can be physical or emotional. So if your stomach is growling and it’s been few hours since your last meal-eating a salad or any other meal will be good enough for you in the immediate but, if there is no sense of emergency and you can postpone your hunger then you are then likely to stop once you feel full after eating. There are no traces of guilt, your hunger was driven by true physical cues.

Contrary to this, if your hunger is sudden and urgent and you crave for specific foods like cookies or chips, or specific types of foods like sweets and fried foods and you are likely to over consume, feeling guilty later, you are about to be snacking out of false hunger, then the head hunger is generated out of emotional cues.

# Next time you reach out for a snack, check in and see which type of hunger is driving you to have it.

  1. Cross check: Your next task after you have identified your hunger cue is to ask yourself a question, and get a clear answer for it. This is another way to put a check before the binge. Most times, you may identify that you are about to eat the snack out of some emotions, but, your mind will trick you into believing you are not. So if you are heading for a snack, (and don’t know yet whether you are eating for emotions) just ask yourself – ‘Why I am eating this?’ and then take a deep breath. You’ll know your answer.

# If it’s justified hunger, grab something healthy-roasted or steamed. If not and you were eating only out of any emotional trigger-place the dish respectfully aside!

  1. Distract: Next step is distract yourself. Once you have put the dish aside, change your location. Go to the next room (from where you can’t see the tempting dish) or head outdoors and distract your mind. This process is important because you need to find an alternative to food which will fulfil your emotions. If you are lonely talk to someone, if depressed or frustrated, watch some comic movie. If exhausted, get a foot massage or a warm soothing bath, if angry let it out or write it out, if you are anxious, listen to your favourite music and, if you are happy and feel like rewarding yourself, indulge in your hobby.

#You can also do some window shopping , reading, walking, exercising, meditating, or taking a nap which will give time to pass off the emotional storm and make you a stronger self- one who has more willpower to cope up with his/her feelings.

  1. Giving In: Emotional eating is after all an automatic and virtually mindless eating habit. At times even before you can grab hold of yourself, you may polish off half of the tub of the ice-cream in that tornado of sentiments. But, then, if you can take a moment to pause now when you are hit with a craving, you’ll be equipped to make a different decision next time.

#When you are giving in, just pause for a minute and reflect back. Don’t shut out, wait. (Because forbidden is extremely tempting, shutting out will make you powerless to make a mindful decision later). While you are waiting, check upon yourself, what’s going on in your head? How are you feeling? Even if you eat after this reflection, you’ll have better understanding of why you did it. This will prepare you for a better response next time.

Understanding-Hunger-Physical-vs-Emotional
If you approach your feelings with kindness, reining in emotions is not a difficult task.

Listen to your emotions, accept them even if they are negative and when you do so, your body will understand that it doesn’t need to overeat to comfort itself and/or protect itself from powerful feelings.

Learning to mind your mood this way will enable you to repair your emotional responses and physical fitness and in this journey seeking help from experts or your personal coach may bring a turning point. So reach out if you need help and forever enjoy a better physical and mental health!

Tomorrow, in the last of the blogs in the 5 part series, I will tell you about connecting with your meals and will share tips on how you can transform and change your relationship with food for the better.

To be continued……………

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