Do you ever resort to food when you're bored, stressed, happy or mad to help you feel relieved? If you do this, you are emotionally eating, which is an underlying cause of unwanted body fat. Emotional eating is when you rely on food that, in most cases, can be unhealthy to help you suppress your negative and positive emotional feelings. When you eat food based on your emotions, it can result in unwanted body fat.
EMOTIONAL EATING LEADS TO MINDLESS EATING
Emotional eating can lead to mindless eating. Mindless eating is where you consume high amounts of calories from food and beverages because you are unaware of how much you eat.
Mindless eating can easily occur because you are distracted by your emotions. When you are eating mindlessly, you are binge eating until you finally feel satisfied. Mindless eating can cause you to consume additional calories that your body does not need, which can cause unwanted body fat.
MINDLESS EATING LEADS TO UNWANTED BODY FAT
Most people who eat because of their emotions tend to eat unhealthy foods such as sweets and junk food high in calories, sodium, and sugar. Eating such foods is not healthy for you to consume when your goal is to lose weight.
Eating unhealthy foods and even healthy foods without limitations can lead to unwanted body fat sabotaging your goal. The effect you get by eating to suppress your feelings is just temporary. The emotions usually come back later, making you feel guilty about what you ate. Feeling guilty can make you feel even worse than before and lead to more emotional eating, which can jeopardize your progress.
WAYS TO COPE WITH EMOTIONAL EATING
To stay on track with your goal to eliminate body fat, you need to find other ways to deal with your emotions that do not involve food. It can be tough to tackle emotional eating because it may be a habit that you have created to deal with your feelings over the years.
However, there are healthier ways for you to manage your emotions that can help you achieve your goal, such as:
- Remove unhealthy food and drinks from your environment
- Meditation
- Watch a movie
- Talk to a friend or family member
- Listen to music
- Go to sleep
- Work out
- Write in a journal
- Go for a walk
- Dance
END EMOTIONAL EATING
It's not wrong that you want to eat food when you feel a certain way or reward yourself for something you have accomplished. However, when you get emotional and the first thing you turn to is food, it becomes an issue, especially if you don't know how to balance things. As you continue to do it repeatedly, you let it become a habit, which may make it difficult for you to maintain.
Emotional eating can be addictive and challenging to deal with, but this is something you can change. It is best to find other ways to manage the emotions that do not involve food to help you reach your goal.
