We always see people who say that eating makes them happy when they are angry or sad, or people who look for happiness in a pack of chocolates. That's why I want to touch upon the issue of emotional hunger, which I encounter very often today.
What we call emotional hunger is the desire to fill the void we are in spiritually with food, especially carbohydrate and high-calorie foods, even if we are not physically hungry. Many studies show that 75% of the reason for eating more than normal is emotional hunger. Again, I would like to mention here that there are 16 different emotions that we confuse with hunger. Loneliness, anger, depression, resentment and fatigue are just a few of these emotions. Determining whether we are really hungry or whether we are eating to suppress our emotions will be the first step in solving the problem.
Let's say we decided that we eat to make ourselves happy, to forget our problems, to calm down when we are angry, the extra calories we consume will eventually gain us weight. will return. If you have decided to lose weight and are experiencing eating attacks after emotional hunger, getting psychological support from a specialist will make your weight loss process much easier. Otherwise, you will lose weight nicely when you are happy, but what you eat when you are unhappy will come back to you as weight. I often encounter clients who become unhappy and eat more out of anger unless they can lose weight. To get out of this vicious circle, we will first treat our emotional hunger.
If you say you want to overcome this problem on your own, the first thing I will say is to get a hobby that will distract you from eating and make you happy in such times. The first thing I recommend to my clients in such situations is to take a walk in the fresh air. Eating a slice of cake in one sitting may make you happy at the moment, but think about the regret it will give you 10 minutes later. When you feel the urge to overeat a food you shouldn't eat, think about how powerful the pleasure it gives you feels when you manage to reject it. But if you still can't suppress that desire and then you can't hold back and eat even more, eat half of it and say you can be content with that much.
How to prevent overeating and emotional eating One of the best ways to do this is to raise awareness. Take note of what you eat during the day. If you think you overeat, especially when you are unhappy, write down everything you eat and write down the emotions you feel while eating it. You will see how much you eat without realizing it.
The last thing I want to say about this is let's not see food as a reward or source of happiness. Let's be a conscious consumer. If we are experiencing serious eating attacks and cannot overcome them, let's get help from an expert without wasting time. Happiness, unhappiness and illness are all for us in life. If we do not correct our eating behavior in such situations, we cannot get out of the vicious cycle of weight-unhappiness that I mentioned above.
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