Some succumb to emotional eating from time to time, while there is a category of people who are addicted to it because of their behavior acquired since childhood, to the point that it is difficult for them to break it.
Emotional eating is a behavior that helps people deal with stressful situations. By eating palatable foods such as sweet, fatty or high-carb foods, their mood improves temporarily, but this short-term relief comes at the expense of weight gain and other health problems.
A scientific study conducted by Alexandre Manto and colleagues in Germany, examining multiple factors associated with emotional eating, found several determinants of stress eating in which biological sex, weight, hunger level, impulsivity, reward sensitivity, or cognitive re-evaluation did not affect them significantly. However, stress level and choice restriction of eating had a significant impact on people’s involvement in emotional eating.
The study included 179 college students (average age 23 years), who were randomly assigned to negative and positive moods; One group was asked to read a sad scenario and imagine a sudden end to their romantic relationship, while the second group was asked to read a scenario in which the word “happiness” was repeated while imagining meeting old friends.
Then the two groups were given healthy, low-calorie granola bars and unhealthy granola bars rich in calories, and the result was as follows: the group that read the sad scenario chose to eat the unhealthy granola bars, while the group that read the positive scenario chose the healthy granola.
On the other hand, Arash Emrazadeh, a researcher in genetics and psychology, points out that emotions, such as stress, are not the only triggers for emotional eating. Emotional hunger is usually associated with cravings for junk food or something unhealthy, because a physically hungry person often eats anything, while an emotionally hungry person wants something specific, such as French fries or pizza.
One of the common stimuli, according to Arash Emerzadeh, is boredom, meaning that there is nothing for people to do is one of the common stimuli for emotional eating, and this is what happened to most people during the quarantine period during the Covid pandemic, when resorting to eating food is only to fill the void.
There are also habits that are often driven by nostalgia or things that happened in a person’s childhood such as reward systems or distractions from problems.
For example, eating chocolate after getting a good grade in school or silencing a child after a crying fit.
The third trigger is tiredness. It is easy to overeat or eat unconsciously when tired, especially when you are tired of doing an annoying task. Food may appear as a response to not wanting to do a particular activity anymore.
And the social influences are there. Everyone has that friend who encourages them to eat pizza, or to go out to dinner after a hard day, so it’s easy to overeat when you’re with friends or family.
The first step to take is to identify the triggers and situations that apply to their lives, say professionals in treating people who want to eliminate emotional eating.
They say that they should reduce the level of stress, which is accompanied by a rise in the level of the hormone cortisol, which increases the appetite of people who tend to emotional eating.
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