Health Fitness

Emotional hunger vs. physical hunger

Many suffer from what is known as emotional eating. In this condition, the food is eaten for pleasure rather than sustenance as it is supposed to be. It is used as a coping mechanism to relieve feelings of distress, such as sadness, grief, depression, anger, boredom, and other related emotions.

Emotional eating is very different from eating to satisfy real hunger, and can be to blame for weight gain, obesity, and the emotional and psychological distress due to guilt and shame that it can induce in those who do it.

Typically, the emotional eater will choose unhealthy foods such as ice cream, cookies and other sweets because it is the fat and sugar in them that create a feeling of satisfaction and euphoria as they induce the reward centers in the brain to release chemicals that make you “feel good.” , like the body’s natural pain relievers, opioids.

Emotional eating can be severe or an occasional occurrence, but for most it becomes a habit, and something they unfortunately don’t even know exists in their own lives. Old habits die hard, as the saying goes, and those who don’t realize it automatically reach for fries and ice cream when distressed or bored.

To break free of the cycle of emotional eating, it’s crucial to understand how it differs from actual physical hunger. This can be more complicated than it sounds, because emotional eaters have spent months or years perfecting the art of using food to deal with feelings, and are often completely out of touch with their body’s actual need for food or how does it feel

Since emotional hunger is a powerful thing, it’s important to assess the signs and take a deep look at your own behavior if you want to stop the cycle of emotional eating and overeating.

Emotional vs. Physical Hunger

Emotional hunger is sudden

Emotional hunger appears suddenly, like an unexpected rain storm on a warm summer day. Usually it is an urgent need for food and it feels overwhelming. On the contrary, physical hunger is not as urgent, it is more gradual and also expected, since it arrives at anticipated intervals, such as meal times.

cravings

Unlike physical hunger where a sensible meal will satisfy, including healthy choices like fruits and vegetables, in emotional hunger one has out-of-control cravings for foods high in fat and sugar.

The craving is an urgent need, and sometimes it feels like it’s something you can’t live without, and only that specific food you crave will satisfy.

guilt and shame

No one feels guilty about having lunch or breakfast, it’s sustenance, it’s what we humans are supposed to do. But, emotional hunger is often marked by feelings of guilt, shame, and regret after binge eating because deep down the eater knows that the food was eaten for dysfunctional reasons.

mindless eating

Unlike physical hunger, where you sit down to enjoy a meal and savor every bite, emotional hunger is often characterized by mindless eating. Without awareness, you can finish a tub of ice cream or a box of cookies without really realizing how much you’ve eaten.

Unlike physical hunger, where you stop eating once you’re full, emotional hunger is never satisfied. The emotional eater will keep eating and wanting more and more food until it is so full that it feels sick.

Emotional hunger is on the mind

Unlike the physical hunger that is felt in the stomach when there is no food or it is time to eat, emotional hunger is in the mind and includes imagining the smell, taste, and texture of certain foods that are craved.

final thoughts

As you can see, there is a profound difference between these two types of hunger.

Can you identify any of these in your own eating habits?

For many, emotional eating is a habit that spans a large part of their lives. It is not healthy, neither for the body, nor for the emotional state of those who have been the victim of this type of dysfunctional behavior.

Help is available.

The key is to identify and become aware of the problem and your own patterns about it, and then learn the proper coping mechanisms that will eliminate the need to use food for emotional satisfaction.

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