Can Your Feelings Make You Overweight?

If you have a weight issue, you may be just another victim of emotional eating. Read on and learn how to control the urge to feed your feelings.

Surprised by the title? You shouldn’t be.

Many women don’t really understand the concept of emotional hunger – it’s all those urges to eat when you are not physically hungry, but still feel better after a piece (or two) of chocolate.

Read on to learn more about emotional hunger and how to control and stop emotional eating.

Emotional hunger: Do you feed your feelings?

To fully understand this concept, you need to understand why you eat and, nine times out of ten, if you’re overweight then you’re not eating out of physical hunger. You’re likely eating out of an emotional hunger which is what leads you to choose foods that aren’t necessarily conducive to weight loss.

Ask yourself this: When is the last time that you felt physically hungry?

You know, when your tummy grumbled, you felt a little lightheaded, and you were slightly irritable and moody? You may even have had the shakes or felt your energy drain. Can’t recall? Don’t worry because you’re not alone.

If you’re not hungry – where does the urge to eat come from?

A lot of us eat out of a myriad of reasons that have nothing to do with physically nurturing our body. We’re either sad, lonely, or frustrated. We crave love, attention, or physical connection.

We eat in an attempt to either distract or soothe ourselves from any emotion or situation in which we feel uncomfortable.

Of course, eating certain foods does both of those – for a short time. But, once you’re done consuming these comfort foods, you’re still left with the original negative feelings, and a couple more as now guilt and shame are added to the mix.

So what do you do to feel better? You eat, and the cycle continues.

The solution: Changing your relationship with food

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How do you break yourself out of this continuous emotion-food-emotion-food pattern? Unfortunately, there is no solution that occurs at the snap of the fingers.

However, with a little time and patience, you will persevere over your emotional eating and change your relationship with food forever – giving you the weight loss you crave more than anything.

Here is how you do itt:

#1: Identify your triggers

Before you can solve the overeating problem, you have to be able to thoroughly understand what the problem is. Therefore, you need to identify the emotions that send you to the kitchen in search of comfort.

For me – my problem emotion is anxiety. That is the one feeling that makes me want to continue to reach my hand into the chip bag or ice cream carton. It doesn’t matter if it is in regard to my personal life, career, finances, or anything else; if I feel anxious, I want to eat.

What is the emotion that makes you want to eat? Is it loneliness (which can occur even when you’re in the presence of someone else, by the way as it is a state of mind not a state of body)? Or, maybe it’s when you’re feeling vulnerable or sad?

Positive emotions can send you in search of food as well. Sometimes when you’re excited or happy you want to celebrate with food. So, don’t count an emotion out just because it is typically associated with happiness.

#2: Come up with real solutions

Once you’ve identified the emotion or emotions that are food triggers for you, it’s time to come up with ways to resolve them that don’t involve eating. That is, you need to create real solutions that heal your issues, not just bandages to cover the wounds. 

For example, if loneliness is your key trigger, what are some things you can do when you feel lonely that will actually satisfy that feeling? Could you go visit family or friends? Maybe you could join a group or take up a hobby that leaves you little spare time and less of a chance that you’ll crave company.

Come up with as many solutions as possible so that you have a lot of choices when the emotion hits the next time. After all, the more options you have to solve the emotion that is your trigger, the greater the likelihood that you’ll do it versus eating high calorie and high fat food.

#3: Take action

Once you have ideas on what to do when you’re emotionally hungry versus physically hungry, it’s time to put that knowledge into action. You need to actually perform the solutions you worked so hard to find so that you satisfy your needs in a way that actually resolves them.

Pick a solution that is most appealing to you and do it. After all, none of these things do you any good if you don’t do them. Take the steps necessary to change your response to your moods and you’ll also change your typical outcome.

#4: Celebrate your victory

It’s extremely important that you acknowledge each and every time you make a positive change. Don’t wait until the end of your journey to do it because you’ll soon realize that there is no such thing as ‘the end’. You’ll always be working to get better and better.

When you don’t give in to the urge to eat and engage in something constructive instead, congratulate yourself. Celebrate your victory by doing something rewarding; something that makes you smile and feels good.

Maybe you’d like to congratulate yourself via taking a long, hot bath to soak and relax. Or, perhaps you’ll finally download that new book you’ve been waiting to read. You could also go all out and get a manicure, pedicure or feel-good haircut to pamper yourself for a job well done.

It’s up to you what reward you choose, just make sure it’s something that you like so that it encourages you to want to feel that success again. That is what will keep you motivated and moving forward toward your goal.

When you start to actually deal with the emotions and feelings that drive you to want to eat, you’ll notice something phenomenal happen. Believe it or not, you won’t be as hungry or driven to eat not-so-healthy foods because you’ll finally be resolving the feelings that make you want to consume mass quantities of food.

Essentially, you’ll lose weight without even trying. I know because I’ve done it. I quit using food to hide behind when I had uncomfortable feelings and started to handle life’s ups and downs. As a result, I got off the weight loss/weight gain roller coaster and found a newfound peace.

Give it a try and see what it can do for you. What do you have to lose (other than those excess pounds)?

About the author

Christina DeBusk

Changing careers mid-life from law enforcement to writing, Christina spends her days helping others enrich their businesses and personal lives one word at a time.

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