Emotional Eating

[liquidstayce]

Emotional Eaters
by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D.

Emotion Eaters are often at a loss to explain why the pounds they've lost creep back again, and they may blame themselves for their lack of willpower. But, in truth, it's really a lack of self-awareness that's to blame -- not being aware of what it is that drives them to eat so much.

Here are the characteristics:

The Emotion Eater only overeats when she's feeling a strong emotion, such as anger or depression.

The Emotion Eater frequently overeats immediately after getting home from work.

The Emotion Eater tends to eat whenever she is bored.

Sometimes, out of the blue, the Emotion Eater finds that she is incredibly hungry, and she almost feels as if she's starving for food.

The Emotion Eater usually feels uncomfortable openly displaying or talking about her feelings.

The metaphysical basis of emotion eating is a belief that other people keep interfering with her attempts to fulfill her life purpose. She believes that if only her children, neighbors, boss, co-workers, teachers, parents, and lover would cooperate, she could get to work on her purpose.

The affirmation for the Emotion Eater is:

"I am the sole creator of my life. I choose now to put loving, creative, and consistent energy and enthusiastic effort into discovering and fulfilling my life purpose. I take total responsibility for structuring my time."

One of the main "problems" that Emotion Eaters face is that they feel hungry a great deal of the time. Their solution in the past has been to eat every time they felt hungry. Unfortunately, since they were often so hungry, this meant that they would eat a lot of food and gain a lot of weight in the process.

Step #1: Identify Your Fattening Feelings

If you are someone who eats to quell emotions, it's important, at this point, to start paying attention to your feelings of hunger. What you'll probably discover in doing so is that much of what you've labeled hunger is actually something else -- anger, boredom, fatigue, depression, or loneliness.

There are huge differences between emotional hunger and physical hunger, as the chart that follows outlines:

The Eight Traits of Emotional Hunger

Emotional Hunger: Is sudden. One minute you're not even thinking about food, the next minute you're starving. You hunger goes from 0-60 within a short period of time.

Physical Hunger: Is gradual. Your stomach rumbles. One hour later, it growls. Physical hunger gives you steadily progressive clues that it's time to eat.


Emotional Hunger: Is for a specific food. Your cravings are for one certain type of food, such as pasta, chocolate, or a cheeseburger. With emotional eating, you feel that you need to eat that particular food. No substitute will do!

Physical Hunger: Is open to different foods. With physical hunger, you may have food preferences, but they are flexible. You are open to alternate choices.


Emotional Hunger: Is "above the neck." An emotionally based craving begins in the mouth and the mind. Your mouth wants to taste the pizza, chocolate, or doughnut. Your mind whirls with thoughts about your desired food.

Physical Hunger: Is based in the stomach. Physical hunger is recognizable by stomach sensations. You feel gnawing, rumbling, emptiness, and even pain in your stomach with physical hunger.


Emotional Hunger: Is urgent. Emotional hunger urges you to eat NOW! There is a desire to instantly ease emotional pain with food.

Physical Hunger: Is patient. Physical hunger would prefer that you ate soon, but doesn't command you to eat right at that very instant.


Emotional Hunger: Is paired with an upsetting emotion. Your boss yelled at you. Your child is in trouble at school. Your spouse is in a bad mood. Emotional hunger occurs in conjunction with an upsetting situation.

Physical Hunger: Happens out of physical need. Physical hunger occurs because it has been four or five hours since your last meal. You may experience light-headedness or low energy if overly hungry.


Emotional Hunger: Involves automatic or absent-minded eating. Emotional eating can feel as if someone else's hand is scooping up the ice cream and putting it into your mouth ("automatic eating"). You may not notice that you've just eaten a whole bag of cookies ("absent-minded eating").

Physical Hunger: Involves deliberate choices and awareness of the eating. With physical hunger, you're aware of the food on your fork, in your mouth, and in your stomach. You consciously choose whether to eat half of your sandwich or the whole thing.


Emotional Hunger: Does not stop eating in response to fullness. Emotional overeating stems from a desire to cover up painful feelings. The person stuffs herself to deaden her troubling emotions, and she will eat second and third helpings even though her stomach may hurt from being overly full.

Physical Hunger: Stops when full. Physical hunger stems from a desire to fuel and nourish the body. As soon as that intention is fulfilled, the person stops eating.


Emotional Hunger: Feels guilty about eating. The paradox of emotional overeating is that the person eats to feel better, and then ends up berating herself for eating cookies, cakes, or cheeseburgers. She promises to atone ("I'll exercise, diet, skip meals, etc., tomorrow").

Physical Hunger: Realizes eating is necessary. When the intent behind eating is based in physical hunger, there's no guilt or shame. The person realizes that eating, like breathing oxygen, is a necessary behavior.

(SOURCE: from Constant Craving : What Your Food Cravings Mean and How to Overcome Them, by Doreen Virtue, Ph.D., published by Hay House, Inc., 1995)

[liquidstayce]

OK so now you read my article and you were like..... aaaahaaaaa
Light bulb goes off!!

I would guess most people do emotional eating to some extent or another.
Now the trick is how to deal with it especially if it is a huge problem. You need to become acutely aware of your motivations for wanting to eat. You need this awareness in order to tell whether your stomach's actually empty or you're upset about something and just want to eat to feel better.

Here is how I have dealt with this in the past:

First, spend the next week analyzing the feelings you have when you're hungry. The best way to do this is to keep a journal recording how you feel before, during, and after you eat. The journal is a black-and-white way of finding patterns in the emotional reasons why you overeat. I've done this exercise on and off over the years along with my documenting my food intake and workouts. Just make sure you are honest. Don't skip any days. Just try it for a week.

Second, the next time you feel like eating, ask yourself if you could possibly be upset instead of hungry. Don't go to the kitchen automatically when you feel hunger pangs. Instead -- and this is important -- give yourself a mandatory 15-minute "time out" whenever you think you're hungry.

Whenever you feel upset or hungry, contact your inner voice. No.. you are not psychotic. You do have an inner voice. You just need to tap into it and listen.

Remember that you are meant to feel happy and healthy, and emotional pain and an out-of-control appetite are signs that some part of your life is out of balance. Your intuition will guide you as to the best route to take to rebalance your life and return to a state of peace of mind and thus a normal appetite. During that moment when you think, "I can't stand this painful feeling. I must eat now!" or "I'm famished and feel absolutely drained and empty," stop and go to a quiet place where you can hear your intuitive voice.

Many Emotion Eaters ignore their intuition because they don't believe they are "strong" enough to endure life changes and challenges. They fear that if they follow the inner guidance to change their careers or love lives, they will face unbearable emotional burdens. This is a rational fear for Emotion Eaters, because emotional pain has accompanied many of their past endeavors. It's easier to remain in the status quo, believes the Emotion Eater, and ignore the intuitive urges to work on life improvements. I'm telling you that you have the power to change that. Occasionally you might fall off the track. I do all the time but I get back up and start over. It is tiring to keep at it too but very much worth the effort. I mentioned that I am going to be doing the weight loss surgery in another thread. There is no way I would even consider it unless I knew I had the tools to deal with the emotional eating. Now I just need to use those tools more often I still have lots of room to improve. One pattern that I do notice is that I am very good now all day long but as soon as I am home alone or right when I get home from work
I have to do the 15 min time out deal. I'm trying not to eat as soon as I walk in the door. One of the things that also seems to be helping is having a snack just before I leave work. Water loading is another great tool.

Believe in yourself!! You can do it!! If you want to PM me more about this type of issue and don't feel comfy posting here feel free.

[The Kizzy]

This kind of makes things clearer for me. Like how I can eat a big dinner, and 30 minutes later want something sweet. I'm always hungry, and I am starting to pack on the pounds again.

I think I will start vomitting after I eat. I hear it really makes you drop the weight fast.

[Darcler]

I eat out of bordem. I've started to try to find a hobby that will keep my short attention span in check so I am not bored all the time.

When I am emotional, I do not eat. I could be starving but I wont eat. It's weird because if I get upset at a hobby and put it down I will want to stuff my face but I wont because (I think) I am punishing myself for not doing it right.

[liquidstayce]

This kind of makes things clearer for me. Like how I can eat a big dinner, and 30 minutes later want something sweet. I'm always hungry, and I am starting to pack on the pounds again.

I think I will start vomitting after I eat. I hear it really makes you drop the weight fast.

dork... that isn't even funny!!!!!

There is more to the 30 min later wanting something sweet thing also. It could be that you are eating a dinner high in carbs or unbalanced that gets burned
very fast and triggers an insulin response. It could also be you have conditioned yourself to think you needs something sweet 30 minutes later. Try giving it at least an hour and a half to two hours after you eat dinner to eat something sweet.
Do the 15 minute thing I mention. Find out if it is physical or emotional.

If after you decide you are still hungry make a good decision on eating something that isn't going to spike your insulin and make you even more hungry again in a short period of time.

Dana and I tend to do sugar free pudding made with skim milk. Sometime he adds in a little light cool whip (1 serving), natrual peanut butter, or a very small amt of fruit. I've also mixed in sugar free pudding with cottage cheese and PB. Kind of my healthy version of reces. Cottage cheese has casin which is a slower burning protein and will keep you full longer. A few nights ago I used splenda, unsweetened cocoa powder, and skim milk to make a healthy version of hot chocolate. Lots of sugar free syrups out on the market now that you can use as well to make different things.

It takes some effort but if you really are willing to make an effort long term and not just for a few days then you can do it!