Eating is certainly one of man's greatest joys largely as it functions as a way of pleasing himself after a hard day's work which to a considerable level is actually aimed towards realizing this end - making food available. Then again, for some people, eating carries a completely different meaning because of the emotions they have come to link to it.
Eating has typically been and has become for most people a way of sustenance. Having said that, this has over the years been changed owing to modernization in certain of the processes related to cooking as well as developments in other forms of entertainment where food serves as an complement.
You will find nowadays, a good number of individuals who at one point in time or another possess a powerful and often unmanageable wish to have some particular kinds of foods like ice creams and pizzas. This habit is what is normally termed food craving - a heightened predisposition to wish to ingest a specific food no matter if you are famished or not. This disposition oftentimes leads to participating in brash overeating and with the person having an obsessive taste for high-calorie, salty, sweet, and fat-rich meals.
Emotional eating on the other hand is more of a tendency to eat according to when your emotions or feelings steer you to eat rather than when your body is starving and needs to actually eat and also how much that it needs at that time.
Be it food craving, overeating, or emotional eating, these tendencies have one prevalent denominator and that's the emotion. This is according to experts who calculate that approximately 75% of all overeating is due to emotions. All these tendencies are arguably the simplest ways to temporarily repress or temporarily relieve an individual's feelings of deprivation, loneliness, boredom, hurt, or stress.
Emotional eating is perhaps the greatest obstacle impeding a number of people from achieving and sustaining their weight reduction targets. This inclination has also been determined to be the main reason most people add-on weight again right after they have dropped body fat.
Like any emotional condition, the best way to handle emotional eating is usually to find out what the precise causes or triggers are and then going about the best way to get over it. Listed here are a number of the main reasons why people today take part in emotional eating.
1. Reaction to Anxiety
When in a condition of anxiety or much better said, "fight or flight" mode, the human body normally requires more energy to work in an effort to appropriately react to the supposed threat. The stress hormone - cortisol is usually released during stress filled times and this hormone has been clinically demonstrated to contribute to craving for food and it is the main reason many people seek out comfort foods when pressured.
2. Comfort Foods
Whether it is unconsciously or consciously done, a number of people have the inclination of using food to calm themselves every time they are encountering difficult or stressful times. Foods described as comfort foods are usually the ones eaten during vacations or special events which if taken at some other time by someone with an emotional eating issue, gives him or her certain feelings of peacefulness and reduced stress levels similar to what they feel during these functions.
3. Food Labeling and Restriction
The notion that some food items are “good” while some are “bad” have instigated many individuals to put a number of self-imposed food constraint on themselves. The human character is constantly curious and has the inclination to normally just want to get to "something that appears to be out of reach" which is a lot more heightened if the "lacking" or "beyond reach" object is a specific food.
This food labeling behavior, has made many men and women to become caught in a vicious circle which involves denial - deprivation and overindulgence concerning food items they have labeled as "forbidden" but which they seemingly have no self-control over. It's a fact that no particular foodstuff can be absolutely thought of as "bad" or "good" - instead the issue is with how much of it that's consumed.
4. Gender and Hormonal Differences
On a more serious note, women and men engage in emotional eating in different ways mostly as a result of certain gender specific differences primarily concerning hormones. For instance, the hormone serotonin which has a very important function in keeping a settled frame of mind is often reduced in addition to estrogen right before a woman’s menstrual period. This lowered serotonin level often leads to frustration and mood shifts in women and which usually ends up in craving for fat-rich foods and carbohydrates.
Sexuality variations furthermore have an impact on the sort of food items someone with an emotional eating issue could crave after. Whilst a lot of males could crave for foods rich in protein like meat, eggs, and hot dogs; many women would alternatively choose bread, chocolates, and their treasured ice cream.
Succumbing to emotional eating can actually be a big concern to get over. Nevertheless, you have to make sure you forgive yourself and refrain from needlessly unforgivingly blaming yourself because of a couple of slip-ups but rather get yourself right up again and simply just begin afresh at the same time learning from the unsuccessful experiences in the past in order to avoid another re-occurrence.
Additionally it is essential to always be reasonably hopeful regarding your ability to overcome this habit by focusing on the positive adjustments you're making and praising yourself for them each day to help strengthen your general determination towards surmounting this habit.