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Emotional binge eating does not completely eliminate stress. Overeating, especially high-calorie, sweet and fatty foods can sabotage your weight loss efforts.
1. What is emotional eating?
Emotional eating is the behavior of reaching for food to suppress or alleviate negative emotions, such as stress, anger, fear, boredom, and loneliness. There are also people who eat because they want to relax or to reward themselves.
When we binge on emotions, we tend to eat junk food, sweets or fast food. These foods are meant to satisfy an emotional need, not to satisfy an upset stomach. In fact, emotional eating not only doesn't fix your negative emotions, it makes you feel worse afterward.
2. Causes of emotional binge eating
Determining the cause helps us find the most effective way to overcome binge eating habits. Common causes include:
Stress in life: For patients with chronic stress, the anti-stress hormone (cortisol) is secreted continuously. Elevated cortisol will stimulate cravings for salty, sweet and fried foods. Repressed emotions: Food is often used to relieve negative emotions, especially in patients with depression. When you stuff yourself with food, you can temporarily forget those feelings. Boredom or empty feeling: Eat to relieve boredom, fill the void in life. Food is merely a tool for the mouth to work and to occupy boring passing time. Childhood Habits: Being rewarded with presents by parents or taking them out to eat every time a task is completed (such as good academic performance, good work) can form habits and last into adulthood. Sometimes, eating a particular dish is a way to recall memories and remind you of loved ones. Social influence: Eating together with family and friends is one of the ways to relieve stress. But when we eat with people, we tend to eat more, maybe because the food is new or simply because everyone is eating.
Áp lực, căng thẳng có thể dẫn đến ăn uống vô độ.
3. How to overcome emotional eating
If you can't control your emotions with methods that don't involve food, you won't be able to overcome binge eating habits. In addition, losing weight according to a scientific diet will also fail if you do not control your eating habits.
When you have an urge to eat, you can do the following tips:
Keep a food diary: Make a list of your foods with time when eaten, amount of food, mood eating and feeling hungry at that time. Based on this, we can see the relationship between emotions and cravings. Deal with stress: If your eating habits are related to stress, try stress management methods like yoga, meditation, or deep breathing. Reaffirming hunger: Need to redefine hunger as physical or emotional? How long ago did you last eat? Fight boredom and emptiness: Instead of filling the void with food, distract yourself with other, healthier behaviors, such as going for a walk, watching a movie, listening to music, or calling friends, relatives. Eliminate temptations: Do not leave junk food, fast food in the room. Healthy snack. If your appetite can't be eliminated, eat low-calorie foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, or whole grains. In short, emotional binge eating not only eliminates feelings of stress, but also sabotages your weight loss efforts. Therefore, if you cannot control your emotions by non-food methods, you need to have a scientific diet as well as exercise every day.
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Reference sources: mayoclinic.org, webmd.com
