Most of us eat with our emotions. Whether we’re sad, tired, upset, angry or happy, food is something many of us over our lifetime have learnt to use in response to these feelings. For some of us, it can result in frequent overeating which understandably in our current diet culture, lands us feeling guilty.
So why do we do it and how do we tell if we are emotional eating of just hungry?
Recently I penned an article about this very topic over on the WHIMN website.
The short story is you may not need to manage it. In some ways, emotional eating can serve a need depending on our personal situation. Losing the judgement here can help. Emotional eating is a natural thing. The key is investigating how often it happens and why. That will help you decide if it is something you might be keen to work on down the track.
The long story is, there are a number of reasons why we eat due to our emotions and mindful eating is fantastic method to help “manage” emotional eating (note: if in fact it needs to be managed). Learning emotional regulation (i.e. sitting with feelings and self soothing) and investigating our levels of hunger and fullness can all help.
If you’re interested to learn more, I’d love you to read the article. Just head on over to the WHIMN website here:
“How to tell if you are emotional eating or if you are actually hungry”
Equally, if you’d like to try mindful eating, why not try our free 5-day mindful eating challenge? You can access it by clicking here.