The psychological symptoms of emotional eating include feelings of guilt, shame, self-doubt, blame, denial, anger, shock, confusion, anxiety, and a variety of other emotions that may prompt you to turn to food for comfort.
if you have ever found yourself thinking about food or reaching for a snack even when you weren't physically hungry, you are allowing your emotions to control your eating habits.
When it comes to emotional eating caused by a traumatic event, you are likely to find yourself feeling numb and withdrawing from the friends and family around you.
You might also experience physical symptoms, such as insomnia or even nausea.
However, no matter the cause of your emotional eating, the behavior itself typically expresses itself the same way: with mindless consumption of comfort foods.
Most of us have been trained by societal norms to use food as a means of celebration, mourning, and entertainment.
So, when your body finds itself feeling a strong emotion that it doesn't quite know how to handle on its own, you are likely going to end up reaching for food to distract or comfort yourself.
It's simple to understand why we take comfort in food if you just spend a few moments considering all the ways that food has become essential to major life events and even our daily routines.
A lot of our life centers around the foods we eat, and so our bodies naturally begin turning to it when we have an emotion that we need to manage. Obviously, though, using food to manage our feelings simply isn't healthy.
That's why it's important that you recognize the symptoms of emotional eating and work to end it.
That will take a combination of addressing the root cause of the problem, your emotions, and also consider what you are eating when you do turn to food.
Simply changing your eating habits isn’t enough, you need to address the real cause of your emotional eating first.
