Emotional Eating
 

Hey People,

Do anyone else experience emotional eating? I got angry this morning with a co-worker and the first thought was to get a soda and eat something like cake or cookies.

My doctor already told me that I'm an emotional eater and I didn't pay her any mind, but now I'm believing it.

I also remember that I experienced nocturnal eating, while on ambien and I don't remember what I ate, but I wondered if this was connected to stress.

What do yall think?

If you'll go get a dictionary and look up emotional eating, you'll see my picture next to the definition! ;) Yes, I'm definitely an emotional eater, but I'm working hard to recognize the signs and cope with them. I have to admit that now that I'm retired, I do a lot less emotional eating.

Before I started my new eating plan and losing weight, I ate for every emotion I felt. I ate when I was happy, I ate when I was sad, I ate when I was bored. You get the picture. This lasted for years and years, all I did was eat. It never made anything better, I think it was just something I learned to do.

Now that I don't turn to eating for anything except as an energy source pretty much, my life has improved 10000%. I do enjoy my food when I have it but it's not used as a celebrating or coping mechanism.

Now when I am stressed, I try to get physical. Maybe go for a walk or pick up my hand weights. Anything but eat. Now it comes more naturally but in the beginning it was so hard.

You can do this too! If I can do it, anyone can.

Thank you Ladies for your advice. I guess it's a good thing I just brought that Wii Sports game, because all day long I wanted to do the boxing and bowling to work out my aggression. I need to go to the store, but I'm not going, because I'm still a little agaitated, but I don't fully trust myself yet to not grab that Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream.

Yeah today is definitely full workout day.

For years I thought I was an emotional eater. But after some therapy and paying real attention to my eating habits it turns out I'm a stress eater. I eat whenever I am stressed. Needless to say, this becomes quite a tricky habit to curb. Stress is my trigger, food is my outlet so I have to start learning new things to do to respond to my stress.

I get a little upset sometimes when people blame their emotions on the things they do. We all have emotions, I hate being labeled as an emotional person just because I cry at movies or empathize with a friend about a turbulent time in one's life. I think emotions bring on stress, there's nothing wrong with having emotions.

I believe that many of us on this board are emotional eaters. Through therapy, I have identified that I often turned to food when I feel sadness or when I have to do something I don't want to do.

I have found that if I can stop myself right before binging to ask myself why I want to eat and what am I feeling, I can identify the emotion and come up with another method besides food to address the emotion.