Emotional eating.
You’ve heard of it, yeah? Maybe you’ve even done it yourself at some point.
Eating because you’re down and basically helping yourself to food that doesn’t HELP!
You’d be forgiven for thinking that your stomach makes you do it.
After all – we go on ‘gut instincts’ don’t we?
But the cells in your body don’t have taste buds, or eyes to imagine what these foods will look like once they’re served.
Your stomach and gut don’t care.
Your stomach has demands for building blocks formed from proteins, essential fatty acids, converting glucose for cellular fuel, minerals and vitamins for essential biochemical cellular reactions and blah de blah…
But it doesn’t have emotions.
It doesn’t get sad when Goose dies in Top Gun. OK?
Here is a question for you (hypothetically speaking)…
- 1. How many bananas can you eat in one go, or apples? If you’re not a fruit fan then how many broccoli can you chow down in one go? Not that much I reckon, hey?
- 2. Alternatively, how much of your favourite junk food can you eat in one sitting? Ha! Interesting, right?
(The answer one is always far less then answer two by the way.)
The body always recognises when it’s had some serious nutrients, and when it’s had enough it signals the brain that we’ve had enough of what it needs.
- With junk food you can keep eating because you don’t get anywhere near as many nutrients.
- With fruit and veg can we eat to the point of feeling stuffed, bloated or even nauseous because there are plenty of the right nutrients in them.
We’ve all done it, right?
Your body is still hungry for nutrient-dense food molecules so the body will keep telling the mind to keep eating because ‘we’re not there yet’.
It’s constantly searching for those nutrients.
Your job is to get the body enjoying adequate amounts of highly nutritious foods.
Any other hunger would indicate that it’s an emotional response from stress…
… Stress caused by work, relationships, insecurities etc.
This is known as comfort eating.
Now, to tackle those issues you need a mindset shift and habitual adaptations.
We often get confused between physical hunger and emotional hunger. (We now understand the physical type, right?)
We get confused because until you become more attuned to your body and make a positive association of your nutrition (which gives you more energy rather than taking it away), you’ll never know the difference as the two feel remarkably similar.
The number one reason people eat when they’re not hungry is to cover up a negative emotion or to fill an emotional hole.
1. Emotional hunger is sudden and urgent (reactive or mindless). Physical hunger is gradual and patient (responsive or mindful).
In order to not have to deal with negative emotions from your body and go inert people learn to bury those feelings with food and other distractions.
2. Emotional hunger can’t be satisfied! Only if you take care of physical hunger with nutrient-dense food can you really satisfy hunger.
Emotional hunger doesn’t need food – it requires you to change its feelings. And that’s the role of an enjoyable training, nutritional and mindset program.
Your mindset will then shift and come to play (a natural anti-depressant if you like).
Learn to control and overcome stress and you’ll never need or want to overeat again.
This is why I focus a lot more around mindset with clients as it controls the other stuff!
Most trainers don’t know how to do this, so they won’t use these powerful tools with people.
So try to work out what’s making you stressed or emotional and deal with that.
Get yourself a good routine for exercise and nutrition so you don’t trick yourself into thinking that you need that junk food.
After all… this can be a vicious circle, can’t it: Eating to be happy, getting overweight so you feel sad, eat to feel happier, get more overweight and sadder….
Start to own your mindset and your diet and you’ll be on the right track to a positive body and mind
PS – cravings come from physical hunger or mineral and vitamin deficiencies not break-ups or deals gone wrong!
Need help combatting stress, hunger and body shape? Give me a call sometime. That’s what my Inner Circle is all about.
