Emotional Eating

Emotional Eating, is a topic that scares most of us to death. We do not understand it, but we know we do it, especially if we are women. We know that it’s always there lurking within us, waiting to bring us down! Diets deal with what we eat, but rarely with the rest of the story, which is why and how we eat. This is where eating emotionally, comes into play. We try a new diet, and hope we can control eating emotionally, long enough to lose weight. It always seems to come back to haunt us!

Emotional eating, is a learned reaction to life! We have learned that food offers comfort for many of the emotional things that we face. Food does not offer any questions or opinions, just comfort, at least in the short term. When life gets difficult or we just want to celebrate, food offers a quick source of comfort, that we greatly enjoy for a few minutes. It allows us to take our minds off of having to feel pain. It lets us just feel pleasure instead. Sounds like a wonderful tool to have in our arsenal, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, food offers only temporary support. For the pleasure of food is not free, but carries extra baggage in unwanted pounds!

For many of us, eating emotionally, has become our go to friend, when life is too hard to deal with. It will sooth us, but not judge. It has been the way we deal with life, for a long time. Many of us do not know what we actually feel anymore. The thought of feeling and dealing with "our stuff" is overwhelming. We eat instead. Let’s be real here, we all face difficult things in life that we must handle.

Emotional Eating, sounds overwhelming when we read about it, doesn’t it? There is one word on this page, that I believe is the key to ending eating emotionally. That word is "learned".

Eating Emotionally, is a learned reaction to life, which has become a set of bad habits. What you have learned can be relearned, or unlearned. Bad or unhealthy diet habits can be changed, by developing a great set of healthy diet habits.

Let’s learn a bit more about eating emotionally, and some of the Lifestyle Solutions that we can develop, to keep it under control. Let’s learn healthy emotional care to deal with life, by learning to feel rather than eating, and ask ourselves, "What do I really need". It’s a lot less painful in the long term.

Additional Info. on Emotional Eating

To gain an understanding of emotional eating you must understand:

• Are YOU an Emotional Eater?


• Emotional and Physical Hunger


• The Physical Hunger Scale


• Types of Emotional Eating


• Food Baby Talk


• Identifying Feelings


• Feelings and Food


• Ending Emotional Eating


• Food Cravings, The Meaning of Food Cravings, and Ending Food Cravings


• Controlling Emotional Eating or Activities to Do Besides Eat


• Emotional Eating Tips: Strategies to End Emotional Eating


• Sneak Eating


• Emotional Health: What is Good Emotional Health?

Emotional Eating may be a food habit that you have dealt with for a long time, but it is changeable and there is great hope!