Eat Out Eat Well

emotional eating

A Dozen Reasons We Eat When We’re Not Hungry

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Eating when you’re not hungry, or when you’re bored, angry, tired, procrastinating, or celebrating can push your calorie intake way up.  The biggest problem is that we often don’t realize that we’re shoving food into our mouths – either because we’re distracted, we don’t want to know, or we just plain old don’t care.

Here are a dozen reasons and triggers for “mindless” eating:

  1. “Cheap” calories – the kind you find at all you can eat restaurants, those freebie tastes in markets, “value meals,” and three courses for the price of two.
  2. Bread and extras like butter, olive oil, and olives on the table or peanuts or pretzels at a bar.  Way too tempting to pass up – especially if you’re hungry or you’ve walked in with the attitude that you “deserve” it because you’ve had a rotten day.
  3. Opening your cabinet or refrigerator door and having your favorite snacks staring you in the face.
  4. Procrastinating or avoiding doing what you have to do by having a snack.
  5. Family gatherings that serve traditional and/or highly caloric foods that you wouldn’t normally eat – and a whole bunch of angst that causes you to eat.
  6. Watching TV with a bag of chips or a bowl of candy on your lap.
  7. Parties and events — especially when you drink — causing you to lose count and control of what you’re grabbing to eat.
  8. Sitting near a vending machine or the snack room at work – and the candy bowls on a lot of desks.
  9. Buffets – anywhere and everywhere .  Oh, the heaps and piles of good looking food. Enough said.
  10. Feeling tired, bored, angry, or “out-of-sorts” and looking for food as a “pick-me-up.”
  11. Having a stressful – or boring –meeting especially when there’s a table full of food nearby.
  12. Getting home, having no plan for dinner, and just picking and nibbling a ton of calories all evening.

What are your reasons?

Head Hunger

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Have you ever followed an argument with a friend – or maybe with your Mom – with a trip to the bakery or the closest candy store?

You could already be stuffed to the gills. But, all you can think about is getting that cookie, or candy bar, or bag of pretzels and chowing down – even though you’re not hungry and may or may not actually enjoy what you’re eating.

There’s Real Hunger And There’s Head Hunger

Real hunger or physiological hunger is your body’s way of telling you that it’s time to eat food for nourishment.  It’s when you have that empty, rumbling feeling in your stomach, a headache, maybe some lightheadedness.  It usually occurs two to four hours after your last meal.

Head hunger or psychological hunger doesn’t have physical symptoms and can happen at any time. It can be triggered by emotional situations, habits — like watching TV, working on the computer or driving in the car — or by food cravings or as a form of procrastination.   Whatever triggers your head hunger can make you think you’re hungry when you’re really not.

Emotions:  Common Triggers For Eating

Emotions are common triggers for eating. Head hunger is emotional eating usually in response to gremlins like stress, sadness, loneliness, anger, fear, or boredom.

Head hunger also serves as a distraction – the eating it provokes can be a way to distract yourself from difficult situations, projects, and encounters.

The thing is, these feelings and situations are a part of life and eating won’t make them go away.  Eating in response to head hunger often keeps you from figuring out what’s causing the feeling in the first place.

“I want chocolate” might really mean “I need comfort” or “I worked my tail off and I really need to be recognized for it.” Those trips back and forth to the fridge or the vending machine might be the ultimate form of procrastination – is there a project that needs to get done that you’re struggling with?

What To Do

Wouldn’t it be great if it was as simple as figuring out what’s causing your head hunger and dealing with it.  The fact is, that’s the answer. Eating can’t really satisfy your emotional needs, and left unmet, those needs will trigger your head hunger over and over.  So, you overeat, you mentally beat yourself up, you feel awful, and the whole process is triggered once again.

To break the pattern, first stop beating yourself up when you eat in response to head hunger — as opposed to eating because you’re starving and your stomach is growling like crazy. Devise a plan to figure out what caused you to eat in the first place. Try keeping a written record of what happened and how you felt before your head hunger took charge. Looking back at a series of entries might give you a clue.  Once you get a handle on your triggers, come up with a plan to deal with them and make a “go-to” list of ways to reward, calm, comfort, and/or distract yourself without eating.

 

Stick With It

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Are you always looking for the next best thing – the next miracle cure for sugar or caffeine addiction, the best way to motivate yourself to exercise, or the best way to lose the most weight in the shortest period of time?

You try, try, and try again. You step on the scale. “That can’t be right – no way – I starved myself all week – I was soooo good! I went to the gym everyday and sweated like a pig!

Sound Familiar?

We’ve all been there. So what do we do? Toss out the baby with the bath water, give up, screech that the diet is a scam, scream that the scale is broken, swear the trainer has no clue what he or she is doing.

Bottom line is that so many of us start with a plan, don’t stick with it, and change course right away. Your body gets confused, your head gets confused, and the scale is probably cringing from the verbal threats you have thrown its way.

Time And A Chance

Give yourself and all of your good efforts a chance. Ask yourself: are your goals realistic? Despite the Biggest Loser, most people are not capable of losing massive amounts of weight in a week. Are your expectations realistic? Do you expect to see the numbers on the scale drop each and every day? The scale might not be moving right away (by the way, minor fluctuations are to be expected – extra salt in last night’s meal needn’t send you into a tailspin) – but perhaps your measurements are changing and your clothes feel looser. Or maybe your body is taking some time to readjust to a new healthy eating plan.

Give it some time before you declare a lost cause, jump ship, totally change direction, or plain old give up. You’ve got to stick with it. As hard as it may be, think logically and rationally — not with your emotions. Change is hard and it takes time. Give it a chance.

What Do Crossing The Street And Eating Have in Common?

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Look Both Ways

Don’t you look both ways before you cross the street — or shouldn’t you?  That’s called being mindful of your surroundings and potential problems – like a car or bike speeding toward you.

Check In With Yourself

The same thing is true with eating:  check in with yourself and ask if you’re really hungry.  Is your stomach growling and your blood sugar low?  Or is it the wafting smell of the freshly baked bread coming from the open door of a bakery or the sight of just out of the oven chocolate chip cookies that creates an irresistable urge to eat  – even if you’ve just had a good sized and satisfying lunch.

There’s the rub: in situations like that you are eating in response to external cues (what you see, hear, smell, or even think) rather than checking in with your body and determining if you are actually hungry.

Be Mindful

It’s called mindful eating for good reason:  you are being mindful, or thoughtful, about whether you really need or want to eat versus eating because your emotions are sending you “feed me” messages.   You know, the kind of messages that make you scarf down the mini snickers bars and the Reese’s peanut butter cups (and then some)  from your kids’ Halloween candy or propel you to taste (big serving size tastes, of course) of all three pies Aunt Mary had for Thanksgiving.

Make Your Decision

Try to let your body talk to you – and then listen to it.  There will always be occasions — certain celebrations come to mind — when it may be important or the right thing to do to eat a piece of cake or a cookie or an ice cream cone.

Before the food starts its path to your mouth, stop and ask yourself if you are really hungry or if you have head hunger  — the urge rather than the need to eat because your emotions and external cues are telling you that you should. Answer the question and proceed accordingly.