Emotional Eating
by Bronwen de Klerk

Emotional eating is very common, and is often a cause for weight gain – often we are not even conscious that we are doing it.

If you feel that you are gaining weight and you aren’t sure why, you might need to take a closer look at what you eat when you are feeling emotional and what exactly those trigger emotions are. Do you eat when you are angry? Do you eat when you are sad? Or do you eat when you are happy or excited? You could record a diary for a couple of weeks to get a better idea of which emotions cause you to reach for certain foods for comfort.

Once you are more aware of your eating habits, you need to decide how you can change them. You need to make a list of your trigger emotions and next to each one give a few alternatives to food for venting the emotion. For instance, instead of reaching for a chocolate when you are angry, try going outside for a quick walk. Or put on a CD really loud that will help you to express what you are feeling. The pull towards the chocolate might be a lot stronger than the alternative, but just tell yourself that you are first going to try the alternative and then have the chocolate afterwards. You will often find that you won’t even feel like the comfort food after you have found a different way to vent the emotion.

There might still be times that you give into eating because you are emotional, but then still try to stay conscious of your full signals. You are still in control if you stop eating when you are satisfied – not over full.