Emotional eating is quite simply what and how you eat, triggered by your motions. It is most probable, although you may not realize it, that you are like most people, an emotional eater.

Think about it. Do you remember when you’ve had the urge to eat because you were in some sort of emotional state? It may only be a good or sad feeling or even a happy, depressed, celebrating, frustrated, angry or scared feeling.  

It’s usual to be unaware of the circumstances that dictate and the reasons that trigger the effect of emotional eating. In reality, many of us tend to make decisions based on our emotions rather than our rational side. In the case of emotional eating ever since we were children, we have been brainwashed into thinking that food usually helps us feel better. 

The primary reason for eating is that it caters for the biological need to stop us feeling hungry.

However, there are also many occasions when we use food to cater for our emotion need, a situation that should really be resolved by some other remedy. There is a fine line between emotional eating and a serious eating disorder.

An emotional eater is different from a binge or compulsive eater, but how can you tell if you are simply an emotional eater and not someone who has a serious eating disorder? Full-blown eating disorders usually make people binge on a regular basis, making them eat huge amounts of food very fast.

There is also a feeling that they have no control over the food that they want to eat. People with eating disorders tend to hide foods either in their house or some other hideaway so that other people are unaware of the situation. They may even hide somewhere and then eat. They probably go and buy foods in secret, and then start their binge eating when the rest of the family have gone to bed. 

Both emotional eaters and compulsive/binge eaters may share a similar characteristic: they often have experienced trauma — either physical or sexual abuse. However, it has been found that the percentage of binge/compulsive eaters who have experienced physical or sexual abuse is higher than that of emotional eaters. 

Unlike anorexia or bulimia, binge eating isn’t a common or well known eating disorder, and many people go on living their lives not realising they may have this eating disorder. Those who have an eating disorder are advised not to go on a diet but are instead encouraged to talk to a trained and licensed therapist.Binge eaters therefore face a number of challenges. 

Emotional eaters do still have many problems, even though when compared to the other eating disorders such as binge or compulsive eating it isn’t as serious. However, there are ways to manage emotional eating. The initial breakthrough is to become self-aware of the emotional eating problem.

Self-awareness involves admitting and accepting that an emotional eating problem does exist. For many people admitting and accepting that a problem exists is hard to do. Some firmly believe that admitting and accepting the existence of a problem means they are weak. Self-awareness is a crucial step towards successfully managing an emotional eating problem. 

Following on from identifying the problem the next step is evaluating emotional eating habits by recording the times you eat for four to five days. In this step, it is not important what you ate but rather when you ate and your feeling and thoughts as to why you ate at that time. By the fifth day, you go over your notes and count the times you ate because you were hungry or you thought you were hungry. Analyse your eating habits over this five-day period, taking note of those times your emotions seemed to trigger you need to eat.  

The final step is your self-management. Keep recording those times you ate and how you were feeling as you ate. Over time, it will become easier for you to identify whether your eating was an emotional response or not. Always try to record the reasons for you wanting your food before you actually start to eat. 

You need to realize, by checking back through your diary recordings, when your urges to eat are in response to feelings of anger, depression or some sort of emotional high. You will hopefully start to be aware of these circumstances and start to condition yourself to put down the food and walk away.  

In time, you should be able to minimize and control your emotional eating habit.